The Pattern Ship (The Pattern Universe)

by Roote, Tobias

  Now straddled across multiple points, his thin-gloved fingers felt for the edge of a tile which he found and pulled at. Using the bent piece of wire he had bought for the purpose, he hooked it slowly upwards until he could see the PIR sensor set into the wall about a foot below.

  It was a cheap Chinese model which he knew wouldn’t take much to set off. They were easily beaten as they were designed to catch movement. He knew that if you move slow enough you could fool it. He placed the tile away from him ready to replace it when he left. He intended to leave the chance of discovery to an absolute minimum, after all he might want to return the items one day.

  Selecting the strip of black insulating tape that he had attached to his arm earlier, he slowly began to slide it across the front of the infra-red beam. It required a very steady hand, which he accomplished by levering both elbows against wall and frame. It took several minutes to cover the sensor as the rate of movement had to be below the motion parameters of the chip inside.

  He stuck down the tape’s edges carefully, then dipping his head below the ceiling, scanned the area visually. It was a strange sensation seeing the room upside down. He looked for anything that had been moved, or he had missed.

  He noted the red digital readout on the wall which from this way up looked weird, he made out the time, ten after one. The blood pressure rushing into his skull made his head pound much more than usual. He pulled himself carefully back up before he puked.

  His previous visits had allowed him to map all visible security. This wasn’t a high risk neighbourhood, despite the proximity of vagrants and bums, so unlikely that excessive security would be employed here. It was mainly used as a deterrent. Not this time, but then he was a professional, although admittedly years out of practice.

  When he was satisfied he had everything covered, Zeke dropped down a knotted nylon rope which he had attached across two of the struts of the duct, spreading the burden. It would be sufficient to hold his weight on the return journey as well as lift the equipment he was going to purloin.

  Using a chromed metal clothing pole someone had kindly left up in the ceiling rafters to spread his weight, Zeke hung from the ceiling by his hands, arching his body out of the duct like a trained gymnast, extending it slowly downwards towards the floor, dropping the remaining few feet.

  With his head now throbbing excessively from the increased exertion, he rested. The aching fury inside his head had been steadily worsening the last few months. He knew it was the metal plate poisoning his body.

  He remained on the floor, legs splayed, back and arms in a running start position while he regained control of the intense pain that caused his vision to blur.

  He didn’t agree with the Mickey Mouse scientists who said his body was adapting to the metal’s presence, he knew the damned thing was killing him in slow, but definite stages. He accepted the fact, even liked the euphoric style buzz it sometimes gave him as it reached new levels of toxicity.

  Now, he needed it to calm down before he could continue. So he waited patiently for the pain to ebb to manageable levels.

  The room was in darkness, but caught the ambient lighting from the street lights as well as from a security light on the front window display. He could see sufficiently for his purpose and looking across the room, espied his first objective.

  He was about to move when something he saw caused him to freeze again, maintaining his start pose.

  A long thin beam of light appeared just a few feet in front of him.

  It formed a curtain of glare that he couldn’t see through as it moved steadily towards him. Weird, or what?

  What was this, an unexpected security feature?

  He looked up, but discovered nothing that could create this illuminated curtain.

  Zeke went to move aside, as he did so it changed direction to intercept him.

  The colour of the beam changed from white to red and then to a polar ice blue as if it had detected his proximity.

  His hands on the floor in front were caught first. The light appearing so intense at the point of contact with his gloves, that it seemed to illuminate the finger joints inside as it progressed past his knuckles up his hands continuing on towards his body.

  Still frozen not daring to move, a strange tingling sensation, similar to pins and needles except much more intense, spread wherever the beam touched him. It wasn’t painful, although it set his teeth on edge making them vibrate as it approached closer to his face. He realised there must be sonic aspects to the beam. He didn’t fancy losing his fillings.

  Concerned now that this might actual harm him, or cause him extreme pain, Zeke tried to move out of its path, but found that he was now frozen in place. Either that, or he was no longer in command of his muscles and limbs. Either way he was now in trouble.

  His head was now an inch from the beam which was working across to him at a steady predetermined pace.

  He tried to blink, couldn’t.

  The light now reached his face, blinding him as it continued its journey across him. His eyes tingled making him want to rub them with his knuckles, which were also still itching from contact with the light beam.

  When the beam made contact with his skull, alarm bells jangled inside his head. The beam was reacting in a spectacular fashion with his metal plate.

  The intense tingling now surged into a flaring agony. His optic nerves recorded the inside of his skull exploding with multi-coloured sparkles as if all his synapses were firing at once. Just before it reached a point of actually making him scream out loud, he blacked out.

  ***

  Zirkos was concerned. The scan of the being showed that it had indeed a large amount of Pheson Alacite in its body.

  The largest amount was concentrated within the being’s head which had somehow bonded to its brain matter so extraction without killing the creature would prove difficult, if not impossible. Nonetheless, it needed that compound to create the processors for the ship’s A.I., which left it with a moral dilemma. To kill a living being to create an Artificial Intelligence was unacceptable.

  It was not as if it had to do something immediately anyway, the process of pollution of the Alacite into the human’s bloodstream was slowly killing it. While it was also manifesting itself at a cellular level, changing the genetic make-up of the being, it would result in a race against time to complete the transformation before the process killed its host.

  Interesting! Zirkos had not come across this form of reaction before. The cells were forming into something entirely different to the hosts DNA. It remained to be seen what it would be.

  It contemplated isolating the creature so there would be an opportunity to monitor the progress, but decided that was not acceptable. Instead Zirkos set the A.I. the task of creating a means with which to firstly, extrapolate the genetic changes and time-scale them with the rate of decline of the being’s health; and secondly, establish a means of removing the Alacite without harming the being.

  Having checked the range of the remit was kept short of invasion of the being’s body, or other physical disturbance Zirkos moved onto other items on his list of objectives.

  ***

  The A.I. given additional objectives to attain noted that the work related to the item it had uncovered previously. It immediately restored its data on the object from its memory store and set about completing its new objectives.

  It received additional instructions to prepare the area designated to manufacture the ship and immediately ‘D-jumped’ to several hundred feet above an uninhabited island it had previously selected in the middle of a sea in the southern hemisphere of the planet.

  From there it proceeded to map the region precisely, including seismic style surveys that gave it pinpoint accuracy of a series of caverns underground. They had probably been created by volcanic activity a considerable time ago in the planets history.

  There were no entrances to the surface, but adequate supplies of air, water and elements for forming the ship as well as providing habit
at for the Maker, when he was re-constituted from his last held pattern.

  The Pod A.I., satisfied that all above ground surveying was completed, ‘D-jumped' into the largest of the caverns and in the absence of any light, used its sensors to map the internal layout ready to begin construction of the ship.

  It de-materialised a massive section of rock, re-materialising it across the other end of the cavern nearly a quarter of a mile away. The crash of the massive slab as it settled into its new home bought rock and stalactites down from the roof where they were suddenly displaced. The A.I. wasn’t concerned, it knew the cavern was structurally sound.

  Now left with a smooth level shelf that extended for several thousand metres across, the A.I. proceeded to de-materialise a newly exposed strong vein of metal into a heap at one end of the shelf. In the process of re-materialising the metal, it was purified to an accuracy of one hundred percent and left on the shelf in stackable ingots of uniform size.

  The Pod, now using its sensors, tackled the next ingredient it required from across the cavern, repeating the process to purify the material and re-materialise it on the shelf next to the first batch.

  It continued until it had over forty piles of varying quantities, all exactly measured for the construction of a single new T-Ship. The Pod ‘Dematzed’ and reappeared above a large chemical factory in an industrialised zone in the northern hemisphere; cloaked, it remained unseen by the inhabitants below. It knew exactly what it wanted.

  ***

  Zirkos was watching the progress while continuing to learn the languages and habits of the beings called ‘humans,’ and was suitably impressed with the A.I.’s intelligent use of the ‘Dematz thrust’. It also realised that without it, the job of building the ship would take considerably longer. The alternative requiring the use of nanobots to extract the elements and transport them in small quantities by tractor beam to the chosen location for the build, was considerably less efficient.

  The Maker temporarily downgraded to an A.I. pondered the human with the Pheson Alacite in its head and bloodstream. It posed a serious problem as there were only two other sources of the substance on the planet and neither of them would be enough on their own to meet the ship’s needs. The human, on the other hand had more than enough for several ship’s A.I.’s. Perhaps there might be a way to overcome the problem.

  It mentally keyed in a string of software code and after checking it was satisfactory as a command query, it passed the structured subset project back to the A.I. and left it alone to work out the dynamics before handing it back to Zirkos as a solution, or not.

  In the meantime, Zirkos carried on internalising the knowledge being transmitted through electronic highways on everything to do with the planet and its inhabitants. They really were amazingly industrious, but a totally unfocused race of beings. What might they accomplish as a race if they worked together, it wondered.

  It recognised though, that their major breakthroughs tended to come about when in adverse relationships with equal or superior competitors.

  This seemed to give them the temporary focus needed to achieve amazing breakthroughs, some of them it could see were strategically important as platforms for advanced technology.

  Again, it noted that subsequent lack of focus sent them off in directions that were non-productive, while other potential advances were ignored completely.

  Their military especially promoted ingenious and innovative concepts which dramatically sped the development of peripheral sciences. Impressive science in all fields, Zirkos thought, assessing the humans as progressive and technologically brilliant. Although still too young a race to make any radical progress in their immediate future.

  They were an interesting species and reminded Zirkos of its own people, in that they had a long way to go, but much promise for an abundant and productive future. It decided to continue to monitor their progress, some of which might be of benefit in the future.

  Thinking of them and its people made Zirkos homesick for company. Although not a long time had passed, it nonetheless recognised that it was a considerable period of time since it had any contact with its own people.

  The millennia lying dormant under the planet’s surface meant that no Brethren would have detected them on a fly past. It resolved that as soon as it was able, that it would reconstitute its natural form and with a new T-Ship, enter a wormhole to transmit current location and receive any news or signals from its long lost Brothers.

  - 6 -

  The sound of windscreen wipers scraping across an icy wind shield faded as Zeke’s breathing became more controlled. Licking his dry cracked lips he attempted to swallow the pitiful amount of saliva his mouth could muster in an attempt to produce life in his painfully parched throat.

  Lying where he had passed out Zeke slowly checked out his body. First manipulating an arm, then a leg, until he established that he was in fact still alive, or more importantly to him, still in one piece.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ he thought as he began remembering the beam of light that had illuminated, then attacked him, leaving him in a temporary coma.

  ‘How temporary was temporary?’ he wondered.

  Pulling his watch near his face he screwed up his eyelids until he could focus on the moving hands.

  ‘Little hand on the three, big hand on the six. Ugh! That’s, uh, three-thirty.'

  He couldn’t see yet if that was morning, or afternoon.

  Pulling himself up, he dragged himself against the nearest counter, sitting there until his head stopped swimming. A quick glance up at the red digits on the wall told him what he needed to know.

  ‘Oh good, it's still morning,’ he sighed.

  He had been out for a couple of hours and was still in darkness.

  Zeke was no fool. He knew something very strange had just occurred, but being a professional he drew the correct conclusion; whoever or whatever it was had not alerted the Police, or the owner, therefore wasn’t part of the shop’s security. He relaxed awhile as his mind and body attempted to merge itself back into a single entity.

  He would have to deal with the light issue later, he still had work to do.

  As he felt around his person he came across the small bottle of mineral water he kept in his pocket.

  Unscrewing the cap, he emptied the contents down his parched throat, slowly at first to wet it. He hummed to test his throat out , it was tender and sore. Had he screamed? He couldn’t remember.

  He resumed his physical check of everything. He still had all of his bits and pieces that he could tell and as he sat there his senses slowly returned leaving him feeling completely exhausted and drained from the episode.

  Staggering to his feet he pulled open the rucksack he had dropped into the room before jumping, and proceeded to fill it with the list of contents he had earmarked.

  After collecting everything he required, he stopped by the till to check out the prepayment cards for internet access. He grabbed a handful and selected half a dozen prepaid month cards out of the pack making sure to leave the top five cards intact. Then selecting intermittent cards to avoid any obvious discovery, he pocketed them. Zeke was keeping a financial tally of everything he took. He would at some stage pay his debt here.

  On an impulse he went through to the small stock room at the back behind the main counter. He selected a smart phone that was at the end of the rack, dusty and unloved; checking that it switched on and getting the NO SIM CARD message, he pocketed it.

  Ensuring he had not forgotten anything he tied the rucksack to the rope and sculled up it back into the duct, then holding onto the top brackets, he entered the duct feet first. He pulled up the rucksack checking the ground below to make sure nothing had dropped or been left behind.

  He replaced everything, having first removed the insulation tape from the PIR with the same attention to avoid setting it off. Then with a feat of strength and agility worthy of an acrobat half his age, he reversed his direction by climbing out onto the duct, then back in
again, to enable him to make his way out of the building.

  ***

  Zirkos had monitored Zeke’s recovery. The fact that it had harmed the human caused a nagging concern, but it was transient pain and had been essential to establish important information from the human’s body readings.

  It recorded considerable data about the alien’s physiology while doing so and even more about the transformation effect on the human DNA, not all of which were debilitating. Some aspects were positively improving the genetic structure, physical speed, thinking, reaction times, and control. Perhaps others too.

  All of these were being modified, but not at a level of awarenesses where the human could actually utilise them consciously. This, Zirkos thought, would take time to settle and become a part of the humans overall body reactions. It set the A.I. to continue monitoring the mutation in case anything developed before they were ready to act.

  Checking the A.I.'s progress, it found that, out of the four hundred and eighty nine components, the A.I. had managed to source, mine and refine over four hundred of them. Impressive performance, Zirkos thought.

  While Zirkos had been monitoring the internet and the human amongst other interests that might require their intervention, the A.I had been busy. Working efficiently de-materialising materials around the globe, or using cloaked tractor beams, it gathered all the raw materials into one place.

  The shelf on the Island was now loaded to almost overflowing.

  ***

  Whilst transporting the raw materials to the Island the Pod A.I. had repeatedly experimented with the Dematz thrust and found it to be incredibly versatile so long as you worked to very precise coordinates.

  It had been working on developing micro materialisation as a sub routine of its human monitoring project using it successfully twice now in placing and removing nanobots inside organic material without side effects.

  It compiled its notes and research as well as test results, flagged it as a priority for the attention of its Maker. Then resuming its sourcing and recovery activity, earmarked the next twenty four components for the ship build and D-jumped, its new term for using the Dematz thrust for short journeys, to the next location.