The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

  I should be building, but I’m in the mood for some destruction—she admitted. It was no surprise, given who she’d been forced to report to lately.

  Strang’s okay, but he’s clearly hampered by orders from above.

  Reporting to the new administration was nothing like coordinating with Kathy and the old Committee. Fortunately, Alum and his Governing Council resided on Vesta, hundreds of millions of kilometers away. In part, that was why DAR-K spent most of her time around Pallas and Ceres these days. Besides, the new administration already had enough on its plate getting the new human colonists organized. She’d only be a nuisance to them right now.

  As always, humans have a way of thinking they’re the most important beings in the region. And wherever they go, they take their prejudices and bigotries with them. Well, I’ve got a news flash for them.

  DAR-K and the twenty million working Cybrids in space totalled almost as many as the surviving humans. Add to that the hundred million Cybrid minds in storage who were waiting to be put into new robot bodies and the humans would be vastly outnumbered.

  She’d allow the Governing Council a little time to get itself better organized and to deal with some of the most pressing survival issues.

  And then, we’ll definitely be talking.

  3

  Greg Mahajani chose Vesta for his surgery. Besides having the best facilities for the kind of alterations he had in mind, nobody there was likely to connect his present face to his new identity as “Darak Legsu” on Pallas.

  Darak’s—that is, Greg’s—ability to jump across interplanetary distances, like those separating his home on Pallas from the surgeons on Vesta, was a secret. No one would expect to see Darak Legsu away from his home habitat.

  On the day he popped in, he was surprised to find a meticulously clean Operating theater sitting empty. He pinged the surgeon to announce his arrival.

  The Cybrid surgeon activated, instantly alert and ready to take direction.

  “Hello, I am PHL-239483. You may call me Dr. Phil. How may I help you?” the robot physician asked.

  “I want you to make me look like this,” Greg answered, showing him a facial design.

  “I’m afraid that cosmetic surgery performed by Cybrids for reasons other than rehabilitation or trauma has been recently forbidden by the Administration. You do not appear to be in need of emergency reconstructive surgery.”

  Cybrids banned from all but emergency procedures? Clearly it wasn’t due to a shortage of surgeons. Dr. Phil didn’t look at all busy. A reflection of the mood of the day, more than the demands. How sad.

  Using his lattice interface, Greg probed the Cybrid’s mind looking for the associated conceptual structures where he could override the prohibition. He felt guilty altering the poor thing’s persona guidelines to get it—correction, to get him—to agree to the surgery. Just this one time, I promise, and only for me—Greg vowed.

  First, to circumvent Dr. Phil’s concepta security. That shouldn’t be too hard; I know all of Kathy’s standard antivirus tricks. The memory of his wife brought a lump to his throat. Indulge yourself on your own time—he told himself. Focus now; mourn later.

  He recognized Kathy’s typical Quonset-five defence right away. It wasn’t one of her best protocols and was severely outdated now. He bypassed it with hardly a thought.

  There. All done, and this poor Cybrid has no idea I’ve changed his mind for him. No matter; I’ll update his security after the surgery. No independent being should be this vulnerable to direct tampering with the essence of his mind.

  Greg repeated his request.

  The surgeon scanned the diagram of Greg’s desired new face as if seeing it for the first time. “Yes, I can create this result,” he said. “The surgery itself will require twenty-four minutes. It will take a further six days for the tissue swelling to subside and for most of the scars to heal. Stem cell changes and alterations in your genetics will activate over that time as well. When would you like to schedule the procedure?”

  Greg considered which few days to book off work to attract the least suspicion. His “supervision” of the Cybrid farm construction team on Pallas was trivial. Keeping up with their plans and progress required only a few minutes of his attention every day. Cybrid teams were constructing the colonies and farm tunnels long before I arrived on Pallas. Kathy trained DAR-K to manage the project well. They’re probably more capable of working without direction from me, than with it.

  That last thought brought another twinge of emotional pain. For weeks, Greg had been wrestling with whether to contact Kathy’s Cybrid counterpart, DAR-K. He missed Kathy so much, and DAR-K was the closest thing to her that he had left. He felt the pull, but he couldn’t bring himself to make contact. Not yet. What if she turned out to be a big disappointment like my own counterpart, DAR-G, was to me? I’d rather keep my memory of Kathy as she was.

  Without the lattice-enhanced intelligence that he and Kathy shared, speaking to either DAR-K or DAR-G was sure to be an exercise in frustration. It was almost as painful as speaking to a merely slightly above-average human. It was unfair, and limiting to all, that Cybrids should still be subject to IQ restrictions imposed by paranoid Earth governments that no longer existed, a paranoia now taken up by the majority of humans in the asteroid habitats.

  Truth be told, his job made him feel more like a spy for the YTG Church-based administration than a supervisor. To offset his guilt, he spent much of his spare time developing imaginative virtual playgrounds the Cybrids could enjoy during their recharging periods. Secretly, he toyed with introducing Cybrid lattice security upgrades through viral packages in the simulations. Shouldn’t the Cybrids—or at the very least, the human minds inside those Cybrid bodies—have the right to decide who got to mess with their minds?

  “Sir? Would you like to select a date, or would you like me to suggest one?” the surgeon prompted.

  Greg realized he’d been daydreaming again. He’d been having trouble focusing lately. He knew it was depression. If he just pushed on, things had to get better with time. Enough wallowing in self-pity. Work on what you can change. Book your surgery date.

  “How about Wednesday afternoon in two weeks? That’s when my weekend starts.”

  “Very well,” the surgeon replied. “That gives me adequate time to prepare the necessary stem cell population.” As he spoke, a tentacle extracted a punch biopsy needle from a nearby drawer. Another tentacle grabbed a sterilizing anesthetic cotton pad. “Lower your trousers.”

  The sheer size of the needle made Greg hesitate. “Not much for bedside manner, are you?” he quipped. He probed Dr. Phil’s medical database and scanned the related literature. Satisfied with the safety of this part of the procedure, he reduced the sensitivity of his backside pain receptors, turned, and loosened his pants.

  The topical anesthetic was cold but effective. Greg felt hardly more than a pinch when the surgeon extracted a number of fat cells from his left cheek. As he fastened his belt, the Cybrid extruded the sample into the waiting growth medium at the bottom of a small culture flask.

  * * *

  The two weeks between his first visit and the scheduled surgery passed quickly. Once he’d set into motion a plan to disguise himself permanently, he felt more nervous than ever about being recognized as Dr. Greg Mahajani, former co-Director of Project Vesta. He needed that new face fast.

  He barely left his apartment except to work. Other than his job, he kept to himself wherever possible. It wasn’t too hard to fool one or two Cybrid brains at a time about the appearance of their human supervisor. He could feed their visual sensors with a false image for the time being, and update their memories at his convenience.

  However, he didn’t think he could simultaneously fool dozens of human inSense lattices so easily.

  On the few occasions he had to venture out in public, he fretted that someone might recognize his face from some old news cast. It was silly and he knew it. His risk was no higher since his decision to undergo su
rgery than it had been when he first arrived on Pallas.

  He was happy he’d stepped back from the Project Vesta limelight a decade ago. Kathy had turned out to be a much better project manager than he could ever be and a more sympathetic public face for Vesta. For a while, he’d been resentful of her popularity. Now, he was grateful people had paid more attention to her than to him.

  As a precaution, he shaved his head and let his beard grow, altering his ID card and central records to match his changed features.

  Finally, the scheduled day arrived. He packed his bags and shifted to a supply closet in the hospital on Vesta. He hoped the three-and-a-half days off would give him a good head start on his recovery. Thank goodness for the Act for Fuller Employment of 2046 and its more humane work schedule.

  Today his anxiety would be substantially relieved. Once the bandages came off and the swelling went down, his true identity would be hidden forever and Alum and his enforcers would never realize Greg Mahajani had made it off Earth alive.

  Dr. Phil had assured him the scars would be barely discernible in a week. “Techniques have progressed greatly since the human colonists were first assigned Cybrid surgeons,” he’d said.

  Greg sensed an undertone of resentment from the doctor, likely at being forcibly sidelined from where he was needed the most.

  Before emerging into the hallway, Greg inserted Police and Ambulance reports in the respective systems to support a plausible cover story about how his blowtorch had lit some residual solvent in a tank he was working on. He constructed a new identity and fake work order to justify the job. He cited a distant tunnel to give credence to his tale, and added the names of appropriate Officers and Attendants to the report, knowing it would be unlikely anyone here knew them personally.

  Electronic trail in place, he walked out of the supply closet and lay down on an empty ER gurney in the corridor with face hastily and clumsily self-bandaged. Orders to move him immediately into the Cybrid OR appeared at the nursing station.

  The hospitals were still trying to dig themselves out of the chaos that came from hundreds of new workers and a change in management. They were used to responding to paperwork. Sometimes it was the only way they had any idea what was going on.

  An attendant moved him to the OR. When Dr. Phil arrived, the staff in the room vacated quickly, taking their anxious whispers with them out to the corridor. The Cybrid surgeon preferred to work alone, and no one wanted to watch its buzzing, whirring tentacles in action on an actual person.

  “So, I’m booked into Recovery Room Four, and I have a private room in the main hospital?” Greg asked the doctor.

  “Yes, you will receive excellent care in our facility. Please don’t worry.”

  Greg took a deep breath. “Can I look at myself one last time?” Dr. Phil positioned a mirror above where Greg lay on the operating table, while they waited for the first relaxant to take effect. He studied himself intently, committing his face to lattice memory. He had no problem overlaying the new features he’d designed onto the digital images he’d captured, but he couldn’t project how it would feel to wake up to a different face.

  He shut off his lattice. He remembered Darian’s discomfiting story of waking up to two separate consciousnesses following surgery, one biological, the other, neurolattice. An experience I can do without.

  “Okay,” he finally said, feeling a lassitude wash over him. “Let’s get on with it.”

  The Cybrid opened the line permitting the general anesthetic to mix with the saline solution in Greg’s IV bag. At the same time, three tentacles snaked over his face, injecting heavy doses of Lidocaine into the area about to be operated on. “Count backward from a hundred,” Dr. Phil instructed.

  “100, 99, 98,…” Greg began. He felt his head go fuzzy and nearly reactivated his lattice. Then he remembered where he was and resumed counting. “97, 96, 10, 9,…” A soft gray peacefulness descended over him like a fluffy blanket.

  4

  “Really, old chum! Couldn’t you have selected a more remote meeting place?”

  At the familiar sound of his old friend’s voice, Jared Strang released himself from his placid contemplation of the cows chewing their cud. His face broke into a broad smile and he held out a welcoming hand.

  “Everywhere out here on the asteroids is bloody remote from our old life, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I suppose it is,” replied Nigel Hodge, former member of the now-defunct British House of Lords. He clasped his colleague’s extended hand. “Good to see you, Jared. But couldn’t we simply have done lunch? What could possibly necessitate a tête-à-tête on one of the farms?”

  “Lunch would have meant a restaurant, and I would prefer our discussions not become fodder for the masses quite yet. Nor the constabulary, come to think of it.”

  “That sounds ominous,” Hodge said.

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe. Let’s say I need to discuss some things with someone I trust to keep my observations and questions confidential. It doesn’t hurt that you’re inside the current administration.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “I still have one foot in the old, I’m afraid. Whether I want to or not. I believe the powers-that-be still view me as an untrustworthy outsider.”

  “I do hope you’re not going to put me in a compromising position.”

  “I’ll try hard to avoid that,” Strang replied. “Though we may have had some disagreements in the past, I’ve always valued your advice.”

  “And I, yours. On what topic may I advise you today?”

  Strang didn’t respond immediately. He returned to his observation of the ruminating cows.

  Hodge joined him, crossing his arms on top of the barrier. The two watched for a minute, enjoying the pastoral scene. They were used to passing time like this, spending long moments in silence while one considered how best to broach a difficult subject or answer an uncomfortable question.

  “How do you see governance of the asteroid colonies going forward, Nigel?” Strang asked. “Have we reinstated royalty, or are we to plot our own destinies?”

  “None of the Royal Family made it to the colonies, as far as I’m aware,” Hodge replied, with no change to his relaxed stance and distant gaze.

  Strang bent down and uprooted a handful of grass. He waved it on the inner side of the barrier, trying to attract the attention of a nearby calf. The animal ignored him, and he let the blades fall to the ground.

  “Not royalty, per se, I would agree,” Strang clarified. “Nevertheless, the Leader of your Church fancies himself above the representatives of the people.”

  “We’ve held no elections yet, as far as I’m aware.”

  “True. Do you think we ever will?”

  Hodge squinted at the light strips mounted on the ceiling of the agricultural service tunnel a few kilometers overhead. “Our democracies on Earth made quite a mess of things in the end, didn’t they?”

  “Surely, you don’t blame the planet’s demise on democracy!”

  “I’d say we were doing a pretty good job of ruining the planet long before that thing consumed the Earth.”

  “Yes, we had problems. But one can only imagine how severe they might have been if decisions had been left to a few people…or one.”

  Hodge dropped his arms from the top of the fence. “And yet, it was a small elite who decided who would, and would not, survive when the Eater escaped its containment.”

  Strang examined Hodge’s face, “You knew that we called it the Eater?”

  “Yes. I even know how it came into being. The newscasts never got past calling it a ‘gray bubble’ or ‘big, gray ball’ or such. But I had my sources, you know, back in the home country.”

  “Yes, but its origin and official name were designated Top Secret. There should have been no disclosure outside of Cabinet.”

  “Nothing official, of course. Still, the Queen was most concerned.”

  “She told you?”

  “Her Majesty’s family and my own
have an extensive history. She was distraught to learn that the vast majority of her subjects were doomed, even though the immediate family was to be saved. She wondered if she shouldn’t stay. Go down with the ship, so to speak.”

  “The actions of your Church made all of that irrelevant.”

  Hodge pulled a cloth handkerchief from his inner jacket pocket and wiped his nose. “Pity, that,” he said. “But there’s no real evidence the Church was in any way linked with the release of the Eater. Alum merely took advantage of a bad situation.”

  “His timing was rather convenient, I’d say.”

  “Yes, perhaps.” Hodge sniffed. “Or perhaps he was simply well prepared. I’m happy to have been on the right side of history in the end.”

  “I imagine,” Strang said.

  Hodge replaced the cloth in its pocket. “You didn’t ask me here to discuss the demise of the Royal Family, though, did you? Nor the relative merits of elite rule versus representative democracies. What’s really on your mind, Jared?”

  “I was called to a meeting with Alum yesterday.”

  “Natural enough for the new Administration to wish to confer with the old. Especially given your position.”

  “Indeed. I surmised he would want to discuss our programs for familiarizing new colonists with the Cybrid population, something related to my role in the former regime. The people whom the Vesta Project placed here were accustomed to working closely with the Cybrids. We’d come to appreciate them as our friends and colleagues, to see them for the people they truly are, and—”

  “Really, Jared!” Hodge exclaimed. “The Cybrids are nothing more than machines.”

  “Some believe otherwise. In any case, I was mistaken about Alum’s purpose for meeting with me. His view, the official view, of Cybrids is that they are to be viewed as our servants, little more than slaves.”

  Hodge scoffed. “Cybrids can be neither servants nor slaves. They are machines. Just fancy toasters. They are not people.”