Anomaly on Cerka
Page 15
At this point, two seconds had passed, and he disabled a part of the field off for several milliseconds over the span of a few seconds, gathering readings on the woman—or whatever she was—within.
What he saw surprised him in a way that nothing had in a very long time.
The stasis field he had initiated should have been a full bubble, making the woman within entirely immobile, but she was moving.
Carefully reading her lips, he saw her mouth the words, ‘Hey, Bob’. Then her mouth became a thin line.
He carefully reviewed the stasis field’s configuration. It should have functioned properly, but it was not drawing the correct amount of power. He attempted to retune the emitters, but when he flickered the field again, he saw that she was still able to move inside, and was saying something new.
“What the… Hey, now. Come on, Bob, let me out. That’s cheating.”
Bob passed an image of the redheaded woman to Tanis, and a moment later, a laugh came back to him.
Bob knew several thousand people who bore that name. None of them looked like the woman he held in the field.
he replied.
Angela joined in the conversation.
Bob assured her.
Bob gave a courteous cough to show his displeasure with such nonsense.
To his surprise, Angela laughed.
His conversation with Tanis and Angela had only taken a few seconds. Next, he summoned a holoimage displaying only the word ‘Wait’, and flickered it in front of the field for the woman within to see.
A second later, she was out of the field, a few meters away, glaring at him under lowered brows while raising a finger like an angry parent.
“Now that wasn’t very—”
Bob snapped a new field around her and debated any further communication. He decided it was worth an attempt in an effort to get her to wait peacefully for Tanis to arrive. He moved the holodisplay, showing a new phrase.
‘Tanis is coming. Please stop.’
The intruder suddenly appeared further down the catwalk.
“Look, Bob, I can do this all day.”
“So can I,” he replied, and snapped a new field around her.
This time when he checked, she was not inside.
Moments later, she reappeared on the far side of his node.
“Bob, please. I don’t mean you any harm, and this is wearing a little thin.”
“Then stop fighting it,” he demanded. “The stasis field won’t hurt you.”
“You don’t know that,” she countered. “I’m from another universe…. What if it does hurt me?”
He waited a few seconds before replying; not that he needed to, he just found that it was useful to convey a sense of disbelief to humans.
“That is unlikely. If your universe was that different, then the laws of physics would have diverged enough that you would not have survived coming here. Your body would have been destroyed or dissolved.”
“Fair point, well made,” the woman replied.
“Our universe is mostly made of matter,” Bob continued, “with very little antimatter. Imagine if you were to travel to a universe made of antimatter and not matter? You would instantly explode.”
“Well, obviously. Are you messing with me?”
“I am not,” Bob replied. “However, I suppose if you and Tanis really did meet in some extrauniversal bar, it is safe to assume that you’re both made of the same type of matter. That being said, it’s also probable that anyone who can create an extrauniversal space and bring people to it could have a way to ensure that different types of matter do not come in contact with one another.”
A smile formed on Amanda’s lips, crinkling the corners of her eyes. “Do you always talk like this?”
Bob had noticed that, though he could not detect EM emissions from her, Amanda had managed to tap into the ship’s public network.
Rather than replying aloud, he backtraced her Link to reply.
Amanda’s eyes widened, and a grin split her face. “Hah, wow, what a voice! Feels like I’m sitting on a bass speaker. Do it again.”
“Oooh, that felt good. You can call me Amanda, by the way.”
“You know, speaking of exotic energy, you’re not just any old AI, are you? I can see some curious energies around you that you seem to be affecting. But, you’re not a Magus, are you, which leaves only one alternative…”
* * * * *
Tanis managed to reach Bob’s primary node only four and a half minutes after racing out of her lakehouse.
At times, she had half a mind to place a maglev line beneath her home, but hated the fact that it would decrease the number of walks she got to take through her woods. And that it might get her more visitors.
That thought was still filtering out of her mind as she nodded to the Marines stationed outside of Bob’s primary node—all of whom appeared more relaxed than she expected—and then burst in to see Amanda leaning on the catwalk’s railing, laughing and shaking her head.
“Shit! It is you, Amanda,” Tanis exclaimed.
“He’s a pretty serious guy,” Amanda jerked a thumb toward Bob’s node while winking.
“It’s better than when he jokes,” Tanis replied as she strode forward. The two women embraced while Bob made a sound of displeasure.
the AI said.
“Whose authority?” Tanis asked. “Angela doesn’t count. You know she’s messing with you half the time.”
The two women separated, and Amanda spoke while looking around the chamber.
“This is one hell of a ship, Tanis. It’s feckin’ huge!”
“It’s a nice place to call home,” Tanis replied amicably. “Well, my home away from home.”
“You normally live on the planet below?” Amanda asked.
“Recently, yes, though I’ve spent most of my life inside this hull.”
Amanda’s brow’s lowered. “Oh really? So, it’s not just a warship, then?”
Tanis tapped a finger on her chin. “No. It used to be a colony vessel—spent about one hundred and forty years in that state, give or take a bit of temporal distortion.”
“Shite, that’s a hell of a stretch.”
“Well,” Tanis paused. “You mentioned that you lived in New York once, right?”
“To be sure.”
“OK,” Tanis said as she turned to guide Amanda out of Bob’s primary node chamber. “The interior of this ship, if you were to lay all the decks side-by-side, is the size of t
he old New York state. Lotta room to move around.”
Amanda nodded appreciatively. “Plenty of room to stretch your legs, then. But what about the green, green pastures of home? Or somewhere to catch some rays? Not that this pasty ass of mine gets much of that, but I’d miss the great outdoors a little, to be honest.”
“Stars, yeah, me too.”
“Remind me to take you to a little place I call Inisfail sometime,” Amanda answered with a smile.
Tanis walked out into the corridor, where the squad of Marines still waited. “Sergeant, thanks for getting here so fast. Turns out it was just a little prank. You’re dismissed.”
The Marine gave Amanda a judging look, then nodded. “Understood, Admiral Richards.” He turned to the twelve men and women lining the corridor. “Fall out, Marines!”
“Sorry, guys, just little ol’ me,” Amanda added with a smile and a wave to the sergeant.
Tanis led Amanda through the forward section of the I2 to the central administrative corridor, describing some of the features as they went. When they came to the corridor—which stretched for half a kilometer between the bridge and the maglev terminal—Amanda shook her head in wonder.
“Tanis…this isn’t a corridor, this is a feckin’ street. Your starship has streets inside of it.”
“Sure,” the woman shrugged and gave a wink. “But we’re on a ship, so it’s a corridor, or a concourse.”
“Yeh, right. That guy’s workstation is bigger than my house.”
Tanis placed a hand on Amanda’s back and guided her toward the avatar’s foyer. “Just wait till you see this place.”
They reached the forward end of the admin corridor, and two wide doors slid aside to admit them. The chamber beyond was thirty meters by sixty meters, and filled with dancing lights and holodisplays drifting through the air. At the center of it stood the avatar currently on duty, Priscilla.
She was fused to the plinth in the center of the room, long, wiry hair flowing out around her head, dancing to some music only she could hear.
As they approached, she swiped a hand, clearing the displays in front of her, and gave the two women a winning smile.
“Well, then, so you’re the one who gave Bob a shock,” she said in greeting.
Priscilla’s laugh sounded like icicles crackling when hit with sunlight on a cold winter’s day. “You forget, Bob, I’m inside your head.”
“Interesting. I can see the connection,” Amanda said.
“You can see it?” Pricilla asked.
Amanda nodded with a smile. “I can see your thoughts blending with his, and his with yours. Oh, and yeah, he was totally shocked.”
Bob insisted.
Priscilla shot a disbelieving look at the overhead before turning her gaze back to Amanda. “Well, either way, glad to have you aboard, miss…?”
“Call me Amanda, or Mandy, or Red, whatever works,” she answered, with a smile.
Tanis coughed and leant in close. “Careful, reading minds is kind of illegal here. I’d keep that ability to yourself.”
Priscilla seemed unfazed, but Amanda looked back at her with a look of surprise. “Oh, really? How the hell is that a law if there’s no magic here?”
“Oh…” Amanda nodded slowly “Umm, anyway…what’s the purpose of you joining minds?”
Priscilla smiled, looking pleased to be back on familiar ground. “Well, I’m sure you’re aware of how people use avatars—usually non-sentient representations—in virtual reality sims?”
Amanda nodded. “Of course, I love a bit of VR.”
“Well, this is the reverse. For Bob, our world and humans are all too simple for him. Manifesting himself to all of us is an onerous task, so he uses avatars.”
“Humans as avatars? Curious. I guess it makes sense, though. Are you in there the whole time?”
“No. We work in ninety-day shifts. We need to stay grounded in our humanity so we don’t get lost in Bob’s mind. We’d be of no use to him, then.”
“Is there an ethics issue, with an AI using humans like this?” Amanda asked.
“All the avatars are volunteers and carefully screened. Also, Bob has proven himself to be on our side many times over. It’s a mutual choice.”
Amanda nodded and looked back at the avatar, but Tanis could also see her eyes studying the bulkheads and overheads, following the paths of things only she could see.
It was slightly disconcerting.
“OK, let’s go see the bridge,” Tanis suggested as she guided Amanda around to the side passage.
“I hope I wasn’t offensive,” the redhead said as they approached the bridge’s doors.
Angela said with a laugh.
“Well, as long as I’m amusing you,” Amanda replied with a raised eyebrow.
“You were fine,” Tanis replied. “She gets that a lot. It’s too bad Amavia wasn’t here to meet you. She used to be an avatar as well, but now she doesn’t qualify.”
Amanda turned to face Tanis. “Oh really? Wow…she really didn’t explain what her old job was very well.”
“Crap!” Tanis exclaimed. “In all the excitement, I forgot that you were at Virginis! What ended up happening there? Is everyone OK?”
Partway through Amanda’s recitation of the prior two days’ events, Tanis led her into the nearby conference room, where the admiral leant against the table, almost slack-jawed as she listened to the tale of a magical battle aboard Cerka Station and Sabrina.
At the end, all she could manage to say was, “Stars.”
“Intense, more like,” she admitted. “Though now that we know that your stasis shields can trap a Magus, you’ll have a good defensive weapon against them. I couldn’t even Port through Bob’s. Only when he flickered it to communicate with me could I get out, and that was really tricky.”
“Good to know,” Tanis said quietly. “I can’t wait to read Jessica’s report on that attack. Should be a wild one.”
“It’s a great crew you have there. That’s one hell of a ship.”
“You got that right,” she agreed. “OK, let’s show you the rest of this one. We can work our way down to my place—we’re having a bit of a celebration that I should get back to eventually.”
Amanda seemed suitably impressed by the bridge, commenting at one point that it was significantly larger than the one on her ship, the Arkady.
From there, they took a maglev to the Prairie Park, with Amanda exclaiming how it was beyond surreal to be on a starship so big it had train stations.
A few minutes later, they were strolling through the park when a soft cough came from the branches of a nearby tree.
“Ooooh, look, a cougar,” Amanda exclaimed.
“Uh huh,” Tanis replied. “He’s the alpha. Going on almost two hundred years old now. He and I have seen a lot.”
Amanda smirked.
“What’s funny?” Tanis asked.
“I have a cat of my own, a saber-tooth called Samhain. He’s my familiar. At a little over eight hundred years old, he’s getting grumpy in his old age.”
Tanis blinked at her. “Just how old are you?”
“One thousand, two hundred, and ninety years old, give or take a few months.”
“Well, you look good for it,” Tanis said with a smile.
“Thanks. This is lovely, though,” Amanda said, waving at the scenery around her. “A bit of greenery, it’s nice. I’m a country girl at heart. Grew up in the Irish countryside, you know?”
“Glad you like it, but this is nothing
. Just wait…”
Amanda gave her a curious look, as if wondering what secrets she was keeping from her.
“Well, I’ve not seen a warship with wildlife on it before,” she mused. “It seems more like a pleasure craft or a museum than a capital ship.”
“That would have been its ultimate destiny, if this war hadn’t landed on our doorstep.”
Amanda nodded. “I know that tale.”
Eventually, they reached the maglev line that would take them to the port habitation cylinder, which Tanis informed Amanda was named Ol’ Sam.
“Now that is awesome. You’ve got a feckin’ planet inside your spaceship,” the Magus enthused in a jovial tone as she gazed at the rolling hills that wrapped around the habitation cylinder. “I’ve not been inside one of these before. Shite, look at that…there’s a lake above our heads!”
“Just a small one,” Tanis qualified.
“Heh, love it,” Amanda commented.
Tanis took the woman’s hand and led her off the maglev platform and into the forest that surrounded her lakehouse.
“C’mon. Joe will love to meet you, as will my daughters. You’re going to have to do a bit of magic for them, though.”
“Like you have to twist my arm for that!”
DEPARTURE
STELLAR DATE: 06.02.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS I2, Ol’ Sam
REGION: Carthage, New Canaan System
“Well,” Amanda said wistfully. “I would love to stay a little longer, but I have stuff to do in my own universe.”
The pair stood at the end of the dock that led out into the lake outside of Tanis’s house, a gentle breeze picking at the Magus’s crimson hair.
“I understand,” Tanis replied. “I have a queue of messages as long as this ship.”