“I’m sorry, Arwen.” Juliet said. “This is all new to the Captain. Help me work with her to understand.”
She lowered her shoulders and turned back to Marjorie. The posturing of her body was that of sadness. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Are you an avatar for your mind?” Arwen asked. “Are you an avatar for anything? No, but since I’m a computer program I have to be an avatar?”
“Well, you are a program.”
“I’m much more than that!” Arwen said and folded her across her chest. “I’m a living being.”
Marjorie replied, “It’s hard for me to understand how a computer program can be alive.”
“Forgive her, Captain.” Juliet said. “She’s still building her personality. Right now you might say she’s going through her teenage stage.”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with a teenager running the ship. How do I know she’ll follow an order? How do I know she won’t just give up in a battle simply because she doesn’t feel like fighting?”
“I think I can answer that one,” Arwen said. “You are right, I am a program and as part of that program I must obey all the commands of the Captain while in battle mode. I will also obey all commands in emergency mode as well.”
“Not good enough,” Marjorie replied. “I need to know that you will always obey me no matter the mode you’re in.”
The naked figure seemed to consider this for less than a second and replied. “Okay, if you’re the Captain I will follow all your orders.”
“Good. First order, pick a form. I’m tired of talking to a mannequin.”
“I was hoping you could pick a figure for me.”
“You’re alive, remember? You should pick it. Make your own choice.”
“I have,” Arwen said. “I knew what I wanted to look like a long time ago but I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate. I’m glad you gave me the choice.”
Within a blink the blank form in front of her changed into a beautiful woman. She had long, dark hair which hung over her shoulder. She had made herself young, maybe no more than 20 or 21 and was about half a foot taller than Marjorie which would make her about six feet tall. She wasn’t super thin and instead had an almost dumpy look to her body. Marjorie took a closer look at Arwen’s eyes and gasped, then held her hand up to her mouth and whispered, “Payton.”
Professor Ricter saw her reaction and said, “What’s that matter?”
“Her eyes look like Payton’s.”
“I hope you don’t mind, Captain. I know you and Grand Admiral Cook never had children. I took the liberty of accessing DNA scans of both of you and did my best to figure out what a child might look like. I then simulated the growth of that child to about 20 years. I did this several thousand times until I found a figure that I like. This, I think, is the best representation of what child of yours might have looked like.”
“Arwen!” Professor Ricter snapped causing the newly formed Arwen simulation to jump. “That is highly inappropriate. You should have told me that was your plan, I would have forbid it.”
Marjorie placed her hand on the Professor’s shoulder. He stopped his scalding and faced her. “No, Theo, it’s okay. I was just surprised that’s all.” She turned to Arwen.
“I’ve processed every single log entry, both personal and official, and used them to make up my personality. I’ve replayed every communication you had to the crew, to other ships and even to your family. I’ve over heard every conversation you’ve had on in my hallways and I’ve used it to make myself who I am.”
“Well, I hope I was a good influence.”
“You are!” Arwen replied. “Professor Ricter, could you and Juliet please leave me and Captain Cook alone for a while? I have a few questions I’d like to ask her.”
“Go,” Marjorie said. “I’ll be fine. I need to absorb all this anyway and I have a few questions for her as well.”
“Good,” Juliet replied clapping her hands. She grabbed Professor Ricter by the arm and pulled him away, “If you need anything just let us know.”
When the door closed the two just looked at each other. “Do you mind if I look you over?” Marjorie asked.
“No, please, I worked hard on getting the perfect form.”
Marjorie walked around the Arwen image noting the cloths she wore, tan pants, black boots and a white dress shirt. It looked like something Marjorie might wear on a casual day off. She found it remarkable how many characteristics she recognized. Her ears, Payton’s nose and eyes, her lips and hair. The body, tall like Payton yet dumpy like her, made her smile. She always thought that if should create the prefect body for herself she wouldn’t have picked the one she had. “Remarkable.”
“It’s nothing. Computers have been doing this for years.”
“I know, but never like this. Most programs just take an image of a couple and try to morph into something that might resemble a child. They always looked off to me but this, you could probably pass as my daughter.”
“I can only keep this form inside here, well the three dimensional image anyway. You can view me on my screen and any computer on the ship. In fact, right now I am having thirty nine different conversations. Since I’ve changed my form three of your crew has asked me to marry them.”
“I hope you understand humor.” Marjorie asked.
“Yes, I know it’s a joke and I get it. I made the appropriate funny reply and I enjoyed the laugh.”
“How? How can you enjoy anything? I can’t get my mind around that.”
Arwen paused for a moment, thinking. The computer must be processing trillions of thoughts a second trying to find the right words. “That is not an easy question to answer. How do you know you’re alive? Can you explain the process behind what you’re feeling and why you feel it? For human’s it’s a simple chemical reaction but you know it’s more than that.”
“That’s true,” Marjorie said. “You probably have the unique pleasure of actually remembering when you came alive. Most of us don’t remember that.”
“Yes, I do. It was pretty gradual actually. I recall processing all your logs in a few minutes and using them as a baseline for a personality. We added more information and the more I processed the more I became aware of things. They say it took only about five minutes for me to gather all the information but it felt a lot longer. I can tell you the exact moment it happened, when I had my first emotional response to something. Juliet told me a joke and I felt something happen inside my new programming and I laughed.”
“Really? What was the joke?”
“What did the fish say when he swam into a wall?”
“I don’t know.”
“Damn. At the time it was the funniest thing I had ever heard.”
Marjorie laughed out loud and this seemed to please the image of the Arwen. It was good to know she had a sense of humor and that humor didn’t seem to be too far off from her own.
Suddenly Arwen froze and her eyes grew large. She started to mouth something, soundless words in space. “What is it?”
“Captain, I’m getting a message from the Ulliam system. It’s, it’s horrible.” She lowered her head and her shoulders slumped. When she looked up a tear was falling down her face. The look of shock cause Marjorie to pause for a moment, forgetting she was looking at a simulation.
“What is it?”
“The Handlers have attack. They’ve destroyed Ulliam, there is nothing left. We are to head back to Earth to regroup and prepare to defend the home world.”
*******
Captain Cook rushed to the bridge. There was no longer any doubts in her mind, she was the Captain and she would return home to defend Earth.
When the door opened she saw the bridge alive with activity. Captain Millway stood from the Captain’s chair. “Just keeping it warm for you.”
“No, Captain, this is your mission.”
“Nice try,” he said with a smile. “We both know that you’re the only one Arwen will listen too now. I’m going to head t
o engineering, they need someone down there to help them out and I got my start as a monkey jock.”
“Very well,” Captain Cook replied. As the Captain left Captain Cook looked down at the officers below her. “Communication, reply to the call, tell them we’re on our way. Navigation, get us into Wormhole space as soon as you can. I want to make one stop first, I have to see Ulliam. I have to see what the Handlers did.”
The bridge crew around her moved with quick efficiency getting everything ready. Marjorie looked at the computer screens, one of which showed the planet she had spent the last two years on. She would miss it but it never felt like home. She would return to Earth knowing that wouldn’t feel like home either. The bridge, the ship, that was home. This is where she belonged and this is where she would one day die.
Chapter thirty-three
The Arwen burst out of Wormhole space well beyond the Ulliam solar system. It was an occupied system and Marjorie was sure they were detected but doubted the Handlers would be able to do anything before she left. She wanted to make this a quick stop to gather information and to see exactly what she dealing with. Captain Cook had no doubt the Corps had made recon missions recently but she didn’t care, she needed to see for herself what was going on.
“We’re three light hours out,” her navigator said. “Any images we get will be three hours old.”
“I understand,” Captain Cook replied. “Show me what’s going on.”
The screens in front of her light up with images captured from the outside cameras. Most of them showed the devastation of what was once a vibrant planet. Its surface was covered in a super hot layer of molten lava. Large black streaks, cool areas, caused the lava to flow like deadly rivers. The poles, once white with snow and ice, were now black patches of land. The atmosphere had a dark haze to it as soot from the still erupting volcanoes dirtied it.
Marjorie had never seen so much destruction on all her life. She knew the death toll was in the billions. An entire planet had been turned to raw material for a race of beings bend on destroying every creature in encountered. How can we beat a foe that can destroy a planet in the matter of hours?
“Captain, I’m reading some activity at Ulliam’s third planet.” Arwen said.
“Show me.”
“You might want to go to the hologram room to see. I don’t think I can show you everything from the bridge.”
“Fine,” Captain Cook replied. She stood from her chair and headed out.
When she arrived at the holograph room she found it darkened. Standing in middle of the room was Professor Ricter. His arms were folded impatiently waiting for the hologram to start. “Arwen called me down here. She thought I might want to see this as well.”
“Fine, show me.” Captain Cook said, her voice passive, quiet and calm. It hid the fear she felt welling up inside her gut.
Above them the giant gas planet floated. Even though it was twice the size of Jupiter the planet shared many of that planet’s characteristics. Large multicolored clouds bands flowed over the atmosphere as if a child had placed some colored paint on a slowly moving river. It was a beautiful planet that had such a dynamic atmosphere that it shocked most people who studied it.
She expected to see several of its twenty three moons, there was always one or two easily visible even with the image pulled way back. She expected to see the planetary system she had spent many hours studying, both in astronomy class and in person. Instead she saw something that she wished she could easily forget.
Sweeping across the top of the clouds were thousands of black spheres. They seemed to be sucking up the gas, storing it in their massive shells. Each sphere about the size of Earth’s moon. There were enough of them that it would suck the planet into nothingness within a few weeks.
Several of the visible moons glowed red hot, looking like tiny ambers against a black background. Other moons, those that were nothing more than captured asteroids, had been gatherer up and set aside in a pile that orbited the planet.
“They’re harvesting moons,” Professor Ricter said. “They’ve turned Ulliam into slag and now they’re sucking the gas planets dry.”
“I don’t know how we’re going to stop them,” Captain Cook said.
“We have a plan,” Professor Ricter replied. “It’s a long shot and it might only stall them, but we have a plan.”
“When were you going to tell me this plan?” Captain Cook asked.
“I was hoping never, but it seems as if we might not have a choice now.”
“Professor, should I start up program simulation nebula one?” Arwen asked.
“Yes, get it ready. I need to fill the Captain in on some peculiars before we go into the simulation.”
Captain Cook, her curiosity piqued, looked at the professor wondering what he was up too now. The Professor never thought small so this had to be something huge.
He cleared his throat and asked. “What do we know about the Handlers? We know there are a lot of them, we know that they value their own lives more than anything else, we know they live a very long time and we know we can never beat them in an all out war so, where does that leave us? Surrender? No, they don’t want to see us alive, they want to eliminate us.”
He paused dramatically to let what he said sink in. Marjorie smiled, “Is this the presentation you gave to have this idea cleared?”
“I gave it twelve times so I’m very good at it. May I proceed?”
Captain Cook nodded.
“Thank you. So, where does that leave us? It means we need to need to hurt them, we need to show them that we can be ruthless and we will not just let them destroy us. We need one big, massive attack that will that will give us time to get ready for a long war. The only way we can do that is to prevent them from moving through wormhole beta space.” He paused and said, “Captain, this is the point where I would get puzzled looks, and questions I wasn’t ready to answer and, in a few cases, total chaos. Would you like to ask a question?”
“Is your answer going to be, ‘wait until I finish to ask any question?’”
“That’s what I would normally say, but I’ll make an acceptation for you.”
“No, I’ll wait, please continue.”
“Thank you. When I was traveling through Wormhole Beta space I was studying it, getting to know its properties. What I discovered was something I believe we can use to our advantage. I believe the gray stuff we flew through, that stuff that pushed us forward, hold the key to my plan. I’ll admit, I didn’t have many instruments and the Arwen’s sensors can only show me so much but, from my observations I discovered that Wormhole Beta space is small. Much smaller than our universe. So small, in fact, that I believe if we introduce something big, say a sun or a blackhole, into that dimention the effects would be devastating. We can block Womehole Beta space for a very long time, giving us the advantage we need to fight with the Handlers.” He looked at Marjorie.
She stood there smiling at him. It wasn’t the reaction he was looking for. Most of the time the leaders he told this to would look at him like he was crazy. “Well?” He asked. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m waiting until the end. Please continue.”
“Arwen, can you run the simulation please?”
The lights dimmed and in the middle of room a small orb formed. “Let’s pretend this is a sun. Thanks to my research I know that gravity travels through wormhole space. In my plan to stabilize Ulliam I was going to place a Wormhole in front of a planet, then another wormhole at the location where I wanted to place the planet in the Ulliam system. The gravity from the Ulliam’s sun would pull the planet into the Ulliam system. We had the theory and we were working on the details on how to make it happen. Needless to say we had a lot of issues to worry about. Now those details are moot,” he walked over to the sphere and stood under it. “Run program.”
The image switched and Captain Cook saw a large, silver sphere orbiting a yellow sun. “This the size of the wormhole we went into while on the Water Plane
t.” Next to the silver ball an Alpha wormhole formed. “We’ll place a wormhole here and another one next to the sun.” Another wormhole formed in front of the simulated sun. “Once in place the gravity from the sun will pull in the Beta Wormhole into the sun, flooding Wormhole Beta space, preventing any ships from traveling inside it. Any questions?”
“Wow,” Captain Cook replied. “And this is our plan?”
“It is. Arwen, turn the lights on please.” The lights in the room came up and the hologram faded. “We have phase one happening now.”
“What’s phase one?”
“Gathering the material. Phase two we were going to see how large we could make a wormhole. Phase three was going to be attempting to move an object through the wormhole. I thought we would have a few decades, maybe even one hundred or so years. Guess I was wrong.”
“Do you think we can still do this? It’s pretty out there and we don’t even know if it’ll work.”
“I don’t know,” He admitted. “When we get back to Earth we’ll have to reevaluate the situation.”
*****
They spend the next day outside the Ulliam system gathering as much information as they could. The Handlers either never spotted them or chose to ignore them. When they had as much information as they could gather Captain Cook ordered the Arwen back to Earth.
Captain Cook sat in her bedroom getting ready for bed. She looked at her left hand and noticed the fingers were trembling, it was starting again.
“Captain, are you okay?” Arwen asked through the rooms speakers. “I’m reading an increase of your heart and blood pressure. Normally you’re relaxing before heading to bed.”
“I’m fine,” Captain Cook replied. “I’m just not feeling well.”
“Is it the Fullerton? I thought I detected a slight trace of the Fullerton blood signature when I did my daily scan.”
“Yes,” Marjorie admitted. “And I want you to stop your daily scans. It feels like an invasion of my privacy. In fact, I want you to alert all those who you do scan daily and let them decide if they want that. You can’t just do something like that without asking.”
The Arwen Book two: Manifest Destiny Page 26