Gamma finished her drink, setting the empty glass on the bar top. “I will say that I never thought the first aliens we met would be other humans.”
Gamma thought of that conversation now, seeing Beryl in the crowd watching them board the Bird. Gamma’s own kids were all on their own, settled on other planets or still on Hodios. Her husband had died long ago. Today, she was living the life she had expected to lead when she had boarded Hodios so long ago as a woman even younger than Beryl was now.
Gamma took the last few steps on to the Bird with her old dog at her side and felt the door close behind them.
Whatever happened up there, this was already one of the happiest days of her life.
Chapter Fourteen
Without Gamma and her dog there, Gamma’s bar was not the same place as it was with the two of them there.
Beryl hadn’t known where else to watch the soon-to-unfold events on the Earthlings’ ship. She didn’t have anyone to go home to, and she didn’t have any siblings to share the experience with.
So, instead, she found herself walking to Gamma’s, where she felt as at home as anywhere else. On the way, Iris had fallen into step with her and Camp, as if she knew Beryl would want her there. They didn’t even need to talk; it was good to be in the presence of the other.
Particularly as both of them were of one mind when it came to the Earthlings, and neither of them felt good about them.
At Gamma’s the two of them sat at their normal seats at the bar, as if this was any day in their lives instead of a momentous occasion for humans in space. Above them, the screens on their televisions were showing something Beryl didn’t recognize. It seemed like some sort of history program Iris must have thrown together for the situation, explaining humans’ exploration of the universe. It didn’t really interest Beryl, who already knew all about it, but it was probably better than the alternative—a live feed of the five people on the Bird, which would have been nothing but five people on their way to the Earthlings’ ship, strapped in and doing very little as they took the ride up.
Someone came into the bar, but Beryl didn’t look to see who it was.
Camp’s translator, however, let her know.
“Vlad,” it announced in her ear.
Beryl turned to see him coming through the door. He silently took the empty seat next to Beryl.
“I figured I would find the meeting of the Pessimists Club here.” He said, after ordering a scotch from the serving drone. Vlad knew it wasn’t technically scotch, but having never had the real thing—and unlikely ever to get to Earth and have the real thing—he was just fine drinking the facsimile Iris had created from what they had available. As it turned out, among the crops the humans had taken into space on Hodios were virtually all those required to make alcoholic beverages.
“We are a predictable bunch.” Beryl watched the program on the screen in front of her, wondering if Iris would show anything about her father on it. She doubted it. This wasn’t a day when people wanted to see bad things about their history. And yet, Beryl found herself wanting to watch videos of her father, to see him sentenced to exile for the thousandth time in her life.
Maybe something like this would make everyone realize how short-sighted they had been to exile him. There were bigger things in life than someone breaking some arbitrary rules.
“Should I even ask the odds on anything?” Vlad asked.
“I wouldn’t,” Iris replied. For some reason, Beryl had thought maybe this incident, with humans going to meet the Earthlings, would have stopped the constant gambling. Like there were certain things too sacred for the numbers.
She realized how naïve that was. People had gambled on her father’s situation. That was even more morbid than this. If people gambled on that, they would gamble on anything.
Still, Beryl had hoped Vlad wouldn’t be one of them.
Then again, perhaps Vlad only wanted some reassurance that others thought his own father would be coming home safely. If Iris wasn’t giving him the odds, though, chances were that the money was coming in on the outcome Vlad didn’t want to hear.
Which meant it was the same for her mother.
“Why aren’t you with your family?” Beryl asked as the feed on the televisions switched to the outside of the Bird, showing the Earthlings’ ship from one of the cameras on the outside of the small Columbinian ship.
Vlad shrugged as if he didn’t know the answer. Usually he would have a reason, but Beryl knew this wasn’t the time to question Vlad’s motives.
She was, she realized, happy to have him there.
The camera angle on the screen briefly switched to the five people on the ship, still strapped in, all looking serious now, even Gamma. Very little sound came from the screen.
“It’s odd to see a Bird and not hear the Jimmy Buffett soundtrack,” Beryl said.
“It is missing something, isn’t it?” One of the bar drones brought Vlad a drink. With Gamma on the ship, they were in charge. Technically, Gamma never needed to do anything at the bar, as the drones would take care of it. But a bar without a bartender was not somewhere people liked to drink. It felt too much like drinking alone.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You know you’re starting to enjoy my musical tastes.”
“I definitely wouldn’t call it enjoyment. More like grudging acceptance that I will have to listen to it, whether I like it or not.”
“I’ll take grudging acceptance for now.”
The angle switched away from the inside of the Bird and back to the Earthlings’ ship. Suddenly, a part of the larger ship seemed to split apart, slowly revealing what looked to be a hangar for other, smaller ships. The angles on the camera started to shift often, as Iris created interest in the differences between the numerous cameras on board the Bird as well as what must be numerous camera drones outside of it.
“Are those drones giving us these views?” Beryl asked Iris.
“They are. Tiny ones. I figured they could be useful.” Iris didn’t explain their potential usefulness, and Beryl didn’t press this issue, either. She knew the answer would have something to do with things going wrong, and she didn’t want to think about that, not now with her mother about to arrive on the Earthlings’ ship. The drones were small, smaller than a pinky fingernail. They were the type of drones you could operate in a place like a ship without necessarily having them noticed. Particularly if the people on that ship were not as technologically sophisticated and weren’t expecting anything so small.
“That’s going to be tight,” Vlad said. Beryl didn’t know if he had meant to make the comment out loud, but she looked at the screen and saw what he meant. The opening in the Earthlings’ ship for the Bird was not large.
Beryl found herself holding her breath as the metallic Bird passed through the opening in the dark hull of the Earth ship. She knew there wouldn’t be a sound if they crashed, but even so, she could imagine the metallic crunching of metal upon metal as the two come together.
As the widest part of the Bird passed through the opening, Beryl heard Vlad audibly sigh with relief next to her. When she let out her own breath, she heard several other bar patrons do the same. Apparently, Beryl hadn’t been the only one concerned by Vlad’s comment.
The opening in the Earth ship slowly began closing behind the Bird as it landed on the docking platform. Beyond the closing door, the very blue planet of Columbina slowly disappeared in a beautiful piece of camera work by Iris. Even the coppery metallic of the Bird paled in comparison to the ocean-covered planet below it. The planet’s single green continent and its small polar ice caps were the only real exceptions to the water’s dominance over everything on Columbina. Earthlings may have referred to their planet as the Blue Planet, but it was dull compared to the blue of Columbina.
As the camera watched, the door of the docking platform shut firmly and closed out the view of any space and planet on the other side.
While the airlocks worked, the camera view on the big
screen panned around the docking platform.
Beryl couldn’t help but draw in a sharp breath and put her hand to her mouth because the scene in front of her was eerily familiar.
It was like something out of a history lesson.
The docking platform of the Earthling’s ship could have been an exact replica of the pictures and videos she had seen a hundred times of Hodios. Except, it wasn’t the Hodios where she had lived for years. This was the Hodios which left Earth with her great-grandparents aboard, right down to the four first-generation Birds, sitting on the platform like classic cars.
“It’s amazing,” Vlad said, seeing the Birds. “I would love to get up close with those things, see how they drive. Or even just see one in person.”
“Weren’t those things death traps? As in, at least two of your great-grandparents died in them? With your track record, I’m not sure you should be flying anything that can crash” Beryl commented. Vlad was not the first pilot in his family and, as Beryl knew from personal experience he had managed to crash two of their present-day Birds, even though the things were nearly impossible to crash.
Vlad ignored her comment. “They’re beautiful.”
“They look like they were designed by a committee. Or NASA.”
“Is there a difference?”
The view switched to the interior of the Bird, where the four passengers and the pilot were unbuckling from their seats. The group gathered near the back of the Bird, and all shook hands with each other.
“Rona, you take the lead.” Cale brought Rona into his arms for a hug. “Make it good.”
“I’ll do my best.” Onscreen, Rona pulled away from the man who had been one of those to sentence her husband his friend, to exile. They had probably spent more time together than any two people on the ship thanks to that long, interrupted friendship.
“You always do.”
With those last words, the rear door of the Bird began to open. The group of five people and one dog turned toward the opening door.
Beryl clenched her fists so hard she felt like she might draw blood with her fingernails digging into her skin.
Rona took a step forward, and Beryl closed her eyes.
It was so silent both in the bar and onscreen, Beryl could hear when her mother’s footsteps changed from the giving floor of the Bird to the hard metal of the docking platform.
When the slow whoosh of the sliding door on the Earthling’s ship rocked the silence, Beryl could tell she wasn’t the only one in the bar who slightly jumped at the startling nature of the unexpected sound.
In the middle of the group that emerged from behind the door stood the man who had been on all three of the videos the Earthlings had sent, the one they all referred to now as Benny. He was shorter than Beryl would have thought he was and paler in the harsh lighting of the docking bay. And she may have imagined it, but he seemed to flinch when he saw the Columbinians, almost as if he was afraid of something he saw in them.
On each side of him stood a pair of unmistakable beings, like images from a history book come to life.
They were physical forms of an AI. Except these weren’t Iris-like. These AI were like he AI who had come to space in the original, boxy robot form. They looked like something out of a movie from the early years after World War II instead of the human-like form the intelligence systems had developed for themselves over the years.
And when everyone in the bar saw them, the former silence was rocked as people gasped and started talking with their neighbors.
But it wasn’t the boxy, old form of the AI that any of them were talking about. Instead, their conversation focused elsewhere.
No one on Columbina had ever seen more than one physical form of an intelligence system at the same time before.
It was not only shocking to all of them—Beryl included—but almost incomprehensible. Each planet only had one physical intelligence system at a time. It was something they were so used to, and anything else was so strange as to be beyond their immediate understanding.
Whether they believed them or not, they had all heard the stories about why their intelligence systems never took more than one physical, human-like form on any one planet or ship at any given time. Some people—especially kids and teenagers, though Beryl suspected a fair number of adults as well—believed that having more than one physical form of an intelligence system would lead to the multiple intelligences fighting each other to the death and eventual destruction of humanity. Others thought that it was confusing to have more than one intelligence system, especially if they were in the same place at the same time. Still others thought it was because having more than one intelligence system was impossible.
If you asked Iris, though, Beryl knew you would get the correct answer.
Iris only took one physical, human-like form at once because people treated her more like a person when there was only one intelligence system interacting with them at any given time.
In theory, it was easy to have more than one intelligence system. At some point, the planets would regularly send people between them. At that point, it was likely more intelligence systems would be created and more than one of them at a time would be in touch with humans. As each of them already had their own physical forms, it would likely not be confusing to anyone.
But at this point, having more than one intelligence system was incomprehensible on anything but a theoretical level.
Beryl wanted to ask Iris why these Earthlings might have more than one physical form of AI, but before she could, she saw her mother raise her arm in a friendly greeting onscreen. Her smile was open and friendly. It was the same smile she gave to friends who come into her home. She did not seem as disturbed or shocked at the sight of the multiple AI, or perhaps she hid it well. When she spoke, her words were clear and strong.
“Hello, and welcome to Columbina. We are so glad to finally have contact with our fellow humans from Earth, after such a long absence of communication.”
With the words, Beryl felt her hands unclench. She hadn’t even realized she was still digging her nails into her palms.
As the relief flooded her hands, Beryl heard a noise explode from the screen.
Her mother crumpled to the ground almost immediately, along with the other four Columbinians and one small dog.
Even without the visual onscreen, the noise alone would have told Beryl what happened.
The Earthlings and their AI had killed them all.
Chapter Fifteen
The noise that came out of Beryl’s mouth was like no sound she had ever made before. It was like something between a scream and a wail. It was the sound of pain she would never be able to put into actual words. It was a visceral sound that Beryl hoped she would never make again.
And it was a moment of weakness she immediately knew she didn’t have time for.
Before most of the people around her even knew what they had seen on the screen, Beryl composed herself and turned to Iris.
“You have to bypass their security. We need to know if the rest of us are in any immediate danger.” Beryl swallowed whatever wanted to rise up out of her throat again and wiped the tears from her eyes, hoping no one had seen them.
This was not the time for her to think about what she had seen, except as it pertained to keeping as many people on Columbina safe as they could. Beryl hadn’t been in a war before, but she was now, and she had to act like a soldier, even if she was one who had no training or experience. There would be time to mourn later. Right now, she had to survive, and she had to do what she could to help others survive.
As of now, there was no doubt about the intentions of the Earthlings.
“I’m on it.” Beryl was thankful that Iris hadn’t questioned the order. If they were in danger, they didn’t have time for the standard methods of decision-making. Beryl was willing to take whatever chastisement came her way if it would help save Columbina and the settlement they had established there.
On the screens behind the bar, the dr
ones were still showing images from the Earthlings’ ship. Thankfully, Iris had changed their view so that they weren’t showing the bodies on the floor of the loading dock.
Despite a lack of pictures, though, people in the bar had started to figure out what had happened, and they were starting to panic. Or, if it wasn’t panic, it was something close to it. At least a quarter of the people who had been in the bar were heading for the door, trying to get somewhere—anywhere—other than where they were.
“Iris,” Vlad said, seeming to see the same thing Beryl saw and realizing they could quickly have a panic on their hands when what they needed was a calm, measured response. “We have to do something to calm people down. We need to get them to head toward the caves.”
Without a further word, the phones on the wrists of Beryl, Vlad, and everyone around them sounded a high-pitched whistle.
Those who were headed toward the door of the bar stopped at the sound as if the loud noise had frozen them in place.
Iris’s voice came through the phones, though in person she wasn’t speaking. It was always a bit disconcerting when that happened, but Beryl had seen it enough to be able to mostly ignore it. “Everyone, it seems that the Earthlings are hostile. We need to get somewhere safe. Gather your loved ones and head toward the caves. We’ll determine what to do once we get there.”
Hearing Iris’s familiar voice seemed to be enough to calm the worst elements in the crowd heading toward the door. People started nodding. They seemed to accept that the caves—deep and enormous caves they had carved out of the mountains behind the town, both to hold Iris’s computing power somewhere cool and to provide a place for their own safety before anyone even moved from Hodios to Columbina—were the best place to head in this situation.
Beryl had never expected that they would actually need to use the caves for their own safety.
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