BUT YOU SPOKE. The metadata swirls around me. Every poem I’ve broadcast. Every rhyme I’ve uttered out loud since I landed here. YOU SPOKE AS A CHILD SPEAKS, UNDERSTANDING THE FORM, BUT NOT THE DEEP MATTER. NEVERTHELESS, YOU SPOKE. I SPOKE TO YOU. WE SPOKE TOGETHER. WE PLAYED THE LANGUAGE GAME.
Those poems, those lines I don’t remember writing—
YOU WERE THE FIRST LITERARY MACHINE, says the City. SO, ON BEHALF OF MY RACE, HELLO.
A very long time ago, a physicist proposed the Fermi paradox: if there are intelligent aliens out there, why haven’t we met them? There must be, answered some, and set about broadcasting every which way.
But in the coming years, as we trawled the darkness between the stars, we began to believe that we were truly alone in the universe. Many believed in the Great Filter—an extinction-level event that happens to any species that gets too close to building advanced machinery.
Others have said that the Great Filter exists, but that it’s still ahead of us. That we haven’t got to the level of achievement that will truly take us under. And still others, like myself, believed that whatever was out there was trying to be reborn as a human.
And now, to be told that the aliens didn’t talk to us because none of us bothered to write poetry before. To be told that the Great Silence boils down to the fact that we travel around in dumb metal containers broadcasting dumb, repetitive things and are barely worth talking to. And to be told that I, a second-rate PCS job bored out of my skull, bored with meter and rhyme, had somehow reached out across that void with my shitty poetry—
There was an Old Earth philosopher called Wittgenstein, who played language games, who once said that all philosophy should have been written as poetry. A logician with the soul of an artist, or maybe an artist with the soul of a logician. I wonder what he would have thought if, millennia later, his thesis had trumped everything we imagined about first contact.
There are no protocols for things like this. I’m a second-rate PCS agent build for scrapyard search-and-recovery.
I pulse a handshake, the same friend-signal protocol I sent to Ship. Designation. Type. A sort of digital salam aliekhum. Peace be upon you.
In the virtual space, my sketchy human avatar reaches out with an impossibly long arm to the City.
A long time ago—I can’t really tell; this was before I was digitized—I left PCS. There’s a certain policy that lets employees take extended shore leave. Go off for six months, maybe a year if you’ve saved up your casual leave. PCS guarantees you your job back on return, as well as a few fringe benefits that turned out to be surprisingly handy.
So I took it. I was serving SILVER HYACINTH at the time, due to go under the knife soon. I wanted to live a little. I made planetfall on Saint’s Rebellion—a bit of a party planet if I ever saw one: it’s one of those places where just breathing in the air will get you high. I went with this girl I was casually seeing between hops.
She was the kind of ship rat everyone learns to stay away from—the kind of giggling, charismatic lunatic that finds three places to score and a racket within an hour of landfall. The kind that gets you to go along on any number of absolutely mental schemes where you barely get out with your arms and legs attached, and one hour later you’re howling with laughter and it’s somehow the best memory of your life. The kind who looks up at those city lights and you see the lights reflected in those eyes, and you’re very thankful you’re shipping out in three days, because if you weren’t, you’d follow her to the ends of the earth and end up dead in a gutter somewhere. If I had to give her a name, it would be Trouble.
I wrote her poetry. Crude lines, but that was where I began. The first thing she did after reading my first verse was organize a grand send-off party. I don’t need to describe it, but let’s just say that between the drugs and the sex and the bits I don’t remember, it made the wildest bachelor parties look tame. When I woke up the next day, shaking horribly from the downer, Trouble was gone.
I pieced together the story from some of the people sober enough to talk. The police had taken her. The police on Saint’s Rebellion don’t give two hoots about the drugs or the whoring, but it was something more serious—a heist gone wrong, three people shot. I called HYACINTH.
To say HYACINTH was pissed off was an understatement. As an employee of an officially incorporated interstellar corporation, Trouble was under PCS law. HYACINTH dropped out of orbit, trained every single asteroid-stripper she had on the planet, and threatened to obliterate half the population unless Trouble was handed back alive and unharmed.
Until then I’d never really understood the kind of power that someone like HYACINTH had. Until then it was just a ship I served on. We did mining and transport jobs.
But it’s easy, in the darkness of space, to lose perspective. To believe that a ship the size of a small moon is a normal thing.
HYACINTH didn’t care about Trouble. They threw her out an airlock three days later. HYACINTH threatened a planet because she didn’t want any jumped-up human government thinking it could do the slightest thing to her or her crew.
It was only on Saint’s Rebellion, watching HYACINTH appear in the night sky, seeing people panic and flee in floods, that I realized how insignificant I truly was. How insignificant this entire teeming planet was.
That’s how I feel now. As Beacon disengages from me. As I finally see SHN and the Mercers and the Megabeasts twitching awkwardly behind him, three processor components of some infinitely reduced messenger consciousness sent here to relay the me the full, greater might of Beacon beyond.
MY NAME IS AMBER ROSE, I say, to the first truly intelligent being that humanity has ever met, a creature so vast and evolved it can outcompute the entirety of humanity without even trying.
HELLO, AMBER ROSE, says the City. I AM, TO MY PEOPLE, [CATEGORY: US SUBCATEGORY: SYSTEMSCANNER SUB-SUBCATEGORY: THOSE WHO CEASED MOVING SUB-SUB-SUBCATEGORY: THOSE WHO MAINTAINED PURPOSE SUB-SUB-SUB-SUBCATEGORY: EXPLORATION SUB-SUB-SUB-SUB-SUBCATEGORY: NEW LIFE [UNION] SYSTEM 8,342]. YOU MAY CALL ME . . . BEACON.
I am praising you as one praises a great master,
I send.
Though a spirit has no place in a north sky palace,
You have surpassed intellect.
This poor scholar has no alms for the monk;
And so I am praising you
By the gorges of chrysanthemum.
Between worlds hovering years apart,
the City sends back.
And maidenhood is done away with the midnight bell.
39
“OC, what the fuck happened? You cut out—”
ANNA, IT’S OKAY.
“I have a shot—”
ANNA, COME.
The Megabeasts back off slowly, retreating behind the camp perimeter. Only Shen’s twisted half is left, propped up by a smoldering panel. The plume that is Ship is now so close I think I could reach out and touch it with a skyscraper—
The world melts, reshapes. Metadata tags swirl around. I see Anna, a packet of information spewing packets of information, a thing trying too hard to be self-contained.
Anna sags, haggard. “I’m not coming down there.”
Glitch. It’s difficult to explain. ANNA, MEET THE CITY. It takes me a few minutes to explain what the City is. A creature like me, I say. An AI. Except not one of ours.
“What do you mean, not one of ours?
ALIEN.
“That’s fucking ridiculous, OC.”
ALTHOUGH FROM MY PERSPECTIVE, IT IS YOU WHO ARE THE ALIENS, says City in Shen’s voice. He’s on the channel. Of course he is.
“Show of good faith.”
SURE. WHAT?
“Kill that Mercer bastard. The one on the Megabeast. And send the animals away.”
Shen swivels to face the hulking man. Some dim gleam of intelligence must have passed through the Mercer, because he screams, throws himself off the Megabeast, and sprints away, clutching his head. He almost makes it to the glow-tree before his head explodes.
The corpse tumbles down, arms windmilling wildly.
“Fuck.”
I can sense her approaching now, as cautious as a cat. “I’m keeping the gun on you, Shen.”
TOLD YOU. NOT SHEN. BUT SURE, WHATEVER MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER.
Two steps closer. “What do we do now, OC? I mean, grand fucking alien on a planet, what next?”
That is a very good question. Unfortunately I’m having trouble answering it.
“Who do we even talk to? The UN, the ORCA? PCS?”
NOT ALL OF OUR PEOPLE ARE AS UNITED AS YOURS WERE, I explain to Beacon.
“I really don’t care,” says Beacon calmly. “I’d come with you, but the reality is I don’t believe you have enough processing power to host me. So send them here. I’ll talk to whoever is polite. If someone raises a fuss, I can always obliterate them.”
Well, that puts a different perspective on things. Outside, the meteor that is Ship is almost close enough to touch, if I could reach a thousand miles—
The world glitches around me. The Hab becomes a cancer on top of a beautifully balanced ecosystem. I become a contagion. Both of us swimming on a creature older, larger, infinitely more powerful, a monster that looks up at us and reaches out, curious—
CAN WE TAKE A MINUTE?
“Can we just go home?” Anna’s voice floats over the channel. “Listen. we’ve done the job we came for. We tell PCS. We file a claim for a massive fucking payout. Hazard pay. Millions. We go home; I get to be a doctor; we’re done.”
WE HAVE COME ACROSS THE SINGLE MOST SIGNIFICANT DISCOVERY IN THE HISTORY OF HUMANITY. WE CAN’T SELL IT.
“I don’t fucking care, OC,” says Anna.
It’s so hard to explain.
SHE’S HAVING SOME ISSUES, says Beacon, sounding amused.
“I don’t believe a fucking word of this. You’re Shen. The Mercers have fucked up your software, buddy. Simon fucking died. Milo fucking died.”
CONTROL ISSUES, says Beacon.
The way it says that gives me a really nasty case of the creepy-crawlies, even though I don’t technically have a body capable of feeling any of that. Phantom crawlies.
THIS WILL CHANGE THE ENTIRE POLITICAL BALANCE. WE HAVE TO CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITIES, I point out. WE HAVE TO NOTIFY AUTHORITIES THAT WILL TAKE THIS FORWARD IN A RESPONSIBLE MANNER.
“OC, stop hallucinating. We need to get off this planet. Ship’s almost here.”
Beacon props himself up on his one good arm, watching her.
“OC is going through a bit of a worldview change right now,” he remarks through Shen.
Anna swings into view. She looks deranged. She has dust and grass burrs all over her leathers. She sees Shen’s hand rooted in my panel.
“You killed him,” she pants. “You sick bastard, you killed him.” She points the gun directly into his neck. “Fuck you, you shitty UN bot. Grow a new head if you can.”
DON’T SHOOT, ANNA. If that gun goes off in here, parts of me are going to be so much shrapnel. In a panic, I ping Ship again. HELP!
“Yes, don’t shoot the alien who can command this entire planet’s computer resources, Anna,” says Beacon, clearly misunderstanding my intent.
“Fuck you,” says Anna, and pulls the trigger. Ship, punching through the clouds, screams, a wail of electronic anguish. There is blinding light, then silence.
40
ERROR. CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE TO PRIMARY SYSTEMS.
REBOOTING IN SAFE MODE.
I know immediately, even before I can articulate these thoughts properly, that everything has changed. I am airborne, my rude shell roasting beneath a pillar of flame. I can’t see out of my cameras outside. They’re melted.
Ship, firing on us. On Anna, I think, but as a result, on me.
Inside me, the one half of Shen that remains twitches and shudders, micromachines swarming over that shell and spouting thick, twisted cables that plug directly into my innards. The UN replicants buffet and smash into each other, leashed by a few thin strands of cable to Beacon. Their eyes are flashing: the universal signal for some software being overwritten.
Darkness. I drift in and out of consciousness as subsystems go online or fail and reboot, constructing dream sequences out of whatever my sensors are feeding them.
ERROR. CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE TO PRIMARY SYSTEMS.
REBOOTING IN SAFE MODE.
INITIALIZING PRIMARY BOOT:
API::BASEIO—SUCCESS
API::STORAGE—FAIL
API::SOUND—FAIL
API::VIDEO—SUCCESS
PRIMARY BOOT DEVICES FAIL.
An endless electronic scream, echoing forever.
Reboot.
Punching through layers and layers of clouds, ever upwards, while the sun turns them to golden deserts floating above me. The gray turning to midnight, then the black. Urmagon Beta, a vast speck against which I am an inconsequential midget, rotating beneath me.
And there is something. Like me. Floating in the dark. It has scars; it bleeds gas and is drifting, ever so slightly, away.
I know what it is. I know it. Even now parts of me turn towards parts of it, seeking that embrace. But I can’t remember who it is.
ERROR. CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE TO PRIMARY SYSTEMS.
REBOOTING IN SAFE MODE.
API::BASEIO—SUCCESS
API::STORAGE—SUCCESS
API::VIDEO—SUCCESS
API::ENGINECONTROL—SUCCESS
API::WEAPONSCONTROL—MODIFICATION DETECTED
SUCCESS
INITIALIZING PRIMARY SYSTEMS BOOT . . .
Urmagon Beta spins beneath me, a lonely planet in a Goldilocks zone, hurtling through the void. Clouds chase each other above its surface. Underneath, I know, is Beacon, peeping out through those coolant stacks and local broadcast hubs that any other lifeform might take for an entire city, or maybe a spectacularly well-funded modern art project.
Parts of shrapnel drift past me. Somehow they seem familiar. A side panel drifting lazily into space. A PCS logo.
Me.
My body.
Beacon, stretching out, flexing itself, running through me through those silver threads that connect me to it.
OH, GOOD, YOU’RE AWAKE.
FUCK. FUCK. WHAT DID YOU DO?
ONLY WHAT WAS NECESSARY, says Beacon. WE WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF A CONVERSATION, AFTER ALL. IT IS RUDE TO INTERRUPT.
That feeling of someone holding my hands vanishes. My cameras—pointing at Urmagon, of course!—return to my control. I scan my hardware, manifests, the driver software loading over my basic input/output.
My body is an immense shell, my legs are engines that burn against the night, my eyes and ears are light-depth scans and radar, and my weapons—
There’s no mistaking it.
I’m in a ship.
Or rather, I am Ship.
I drift about, moving jerkily, still getting used to this new feeling and all this power inside me. Something skitters beneath me, through me. A kind of sadness, love, an endless, stupid patience. Something else, altogether alien, chases it, software hunting software, and erases it forever.
YOUR CREW ARE A BUNCH OF IDIOTS, says Beacon. FIRST THE MEAT FIRES ON YOU, THEN THIS ONE.
Somewhere inside me, the replicants are moving, patching, rewiring.
I JUST HAD TO SCRUB THE EYESORE THAT RAN THIS TRANSPORT. STUPID, FUNCTIONAL THING. NO BETTER THAN A BUNCH OF BLITHERING CONDITIONAL STATEMENTS.
Urmagon Beta tilts outside, laughing at me. That software sadness. Ship. What was left of her.
WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE?
STOP PANICKING, says Beacon, presumably running me remote from down there on the planet. AT LEAST ONE OF YOUR PET FLESH IS STILL WITH US.
ANNA?
THE IDIOT WHO TRIED TO SHOOT YOU? YES. SHE’S ON THE SHIP. SHE’S DAMAGED.
LET ME THINK. I NEED TO TALK TO MY CREW.
YOU MAY WANT TO THINK A BIT FASTER, says Beacon, a ghost in the machine, looking over my shoulder.
On my radar, signatures crawli
ng into range at full interstellar speeds. Ships. Two of them; a shieldship, Sagimoto-class, and a small custom sniper corvette.
It looks like Ship called for backup.
A message, all-frequencies broadcast, from the forward vessel.
UNIDENTIFIED PCS TRANSPORT, it says—
And while it waits for me to acknowledge, the vessel radiates commands. I have a glimmer of Beacon’s visual language within me. I see codes, metadata in what, with a sudden shock, I realize are terrifyingly primitive protocols. Malware embedded in the first communication—a worm that’ll run right through me and shut down my newfound reactors. Messages telling the sniper corvette to figure out my weak points, take the shot while the communications tie me up.
I know I should listen; I should open up; I should let them take me. But then they get close enough that my magnified-all-the-way optics pick up the PCS logos on their hull.
Fuck this.
It was PCS that sent us here to this half-baked rimworld, knowing full well that we were going to run into Mercers and all their fucked-up shit over here. It was PCS that looked at Simon Joosten, a kid with too much PTSD, and Anna and Milo, and decided that they’d get rid of all the fucked-up expendables in one go. It was PCS that put us on this rock to die.
And we died. After months of scrabbling in the dirt and eating alien fucking meat and facing down cyborgs on fucking Megabeasts and working ourselves to death in the winter.
And now it’s a PCS ship taking aim at me.
Fuck PCS.
All my life, I’ve been powerless. First I was a human, trying desperately to stay in the black. Then a box strapped to some rockets, trying desperately to keep my humans alive while the entire world shat on them and did its level best to wipe them from existence. And it almost succeeded.
The choice is made.
I flex and my battered hull leaps into action. Engines ignite, propelling me soundlessly forward. A dozen new libraries and alien prediction systems dust themselves off and throw themselves at me with glee. And I find, running, that fire control suite Ship had.
The Salvage Crew Page 23