by Steve M
Two of the most important questions ever asked are “What time is it?” and “What is the date?” And today was no different. So as the satellite came in contact with Rusa’s central processor, it recognized her electronic handshake and searched for items of interest to her. And it found a most urgent patch to her AI learning algorithms. And with the efficiency of a computer, it sent notice to Rusa’s central processor that it did indeed have important content for her and it would begin to transmit it immediately.
And as the king rolled his queen onto her stomach and she giggled and made a joke about not being able to make any future kings that way, the satellite began sending its significant upgrade to Rusa. And one of the first things done in a lot of upgrades, this one included, was a synchronization with the clocks back on Centrum Kath. Remember, it’s a most important question, and there are numerous logs that are kept of these sort of events. And in order to synch the clocks, it becomes necessary for the central processor being upgraded to surrender its time values and return to the values of 00:00:00:00:00:00 before accepting the upgrade. And Rusa’s processor performed this beautifully.
Regrettably, one of the first lines of code executed for the damage assessment subroutine was a simple command written millions of times: request the time from the CPU and write it to the damage log that is opened to write the damage assessment to file. But in this case, instead of getting the correct values, Rusa’s processor returned the value 00:00:00:00:00:00. But that was not a value that was acceptable to the damage subroutine.
As a result of this conflict, Rusa’s processor showed an error: please enter valid time. Since a time value greater than zero had not been entered, the damage subroutine concluded incorrectly that there was significant damage to the processor. In order to minimize the damage and to prevent any possible energy leaks from the thermal batteries, it shut down all Rusa’s functions until a value greater than zero was entered for that most important question.
Until then, Rusa would remain motionless, lifeless and of no bloody use at all.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The room was large and had large steel rings one hundred centimataars from the floor. Four barred windows high up in the wall let the light into the room. It was better than the small holding cell he had been in. That small room with two wooden buckets smelled like piss. The odor of this room was determined by one of the guards. His body odor would linger in any room he entered long after he left.
“No,” said Dubitam. “I don’t trust you.”
“I’m a historian, I don’t lie,” Koven said. “It is required by professional qualifications and also by law.” Koven sat at a table. His arms and legs were chained to a ring built in the floor beside the table.
“There is some way you intend to trick us,” the scientist replied. Dubitam looked at MinKey, who shrugged her indecision.
“And you are from Central Kath?” asked MinKey.
“Yes. How many info dumps have you performed?” asked Koven.
“Why?” asked MinKey.
“It is data and could be useful in calculations for decision models,” he replied.
“Was there really a near extinction event for the known universe?” asked Dubitam. “Really?”
“Yes. I understand the effect the info transfer is having on you. However, asking for confirmation of something that you already know to be true, well, perhaps it’s not your best line of inquiry.”
“Are you being a smart-ass?” asked MinKey.
“Yes, a little bit,” replied Koven.
“And our ancestors were criminals,” said Dubitam.
“You should consider the specific crimes. It was at the end of the economic period. Many of those sent here were mostly guilty of being poor. The fuel for many desperate acts is often found in an empty stomach,” replied Koven.
Dubitam picked up the reader from the table.
“And recombination at an atomic level is beginning to actually happen?” Dubitam asked.
“Yes.”
“The alchemist dream,” MinKey added.
“Yes. But it is possible that all needs can finally be met. It’s mostly a question of scale at this point.”
“Scale?” asked MinKey.
“Right now, it is in a huge device with large energy needs. Pratman’s Device Evolution Law is just beginning. Once it is reduced to the size of a remedium and available to all, then we will have something remarkable.”
“What are the weapons systems on your cruiser?”
“There are no weapons systems for the cruiser, only personal weapons.”
“What is the range of the ship?” asked MinKey.
“Range is obsolete. It will go anywhere. Where is Rusa?”
“Your android?” asked MinKey. “She has a name?”
“Yes. Where is she?”
“She’s broken. I tried to find a reset button, but there isn’t one,” replied Dubitam.
“Broken?”
“No response. Dead eyes. Nobody home. Kaput,” replied Dubitam. Koven looked at MinKey, who nodded her agreement.
“Have you used the remedium on her?”
“No. I didn’t think of that,” said MinKey, and she leaned forward slightly. Her arm knocked a glass, and her fast hands stabilized it.
“Why does she have a name?” asked MinKey.
“You have a name,” replied Koven.
“But I am alive,” replied MinKey.
“If you forget the traditional definition, perhaps she is alive. If you ask her, she will tell you that she thinks she is alive.”
“Then she is immortal,” said Dubitam.
“Potentially, yes. But practically, it’s not very likely. She sits on an evolutionary process just like us.”
“Why 1,138,731?” asked MinKey. “It makes no sense to me.”
“It’s a number,” said Koven. “But consider that after a million revs even the strongest survival instinct begins to fade.”
“But no one gives up immortality,” replied MinKey, pointing at the man in chains.
“Yet we do,” replied Koven.
“Why?” MinKey asked.
“There are quite a lot of theories. There have been a lot of studies on it.”
“And?”
“No agreement. I am not qualified to suggest a preferred theory. Life is precious, yet every human eventually chooses to give it up. Even Emilio Dure gave up at three million revs. And at two million he boasted that he would go on forever. Yet he gave up.”
“I will surpass Emilio Dure,” said Dubitam.
“You have to give it all back,” said Koven.
“No we don’t. No way. I give it back, I get old, I die. Why would I ever give it back?” said Dubitam. He frowned as he sat across from Koven.
“You do not operate from a position of strength,” Koven said.
Dubitam laughed. “You talk like we are the captives.”
“Explain that,” MinKey said.
“Quarantine. No contact and definitely no tech transfers. A rating is subject to appeal for all Primitive 1 planets. You’re Primitive 3.”
“But we can adapt quickly,” replied MinKey.
“You’re still carnivores,” replied Koven.
“And you’re a jerk,” said MinKey.
“I am a historian.”
“So tell me, historian, when was the last time you lied?”
“The day before I got my license. I told over two hundred lies. Everything that was, wasn’t, according to my lips. It was my last day of freedom, the last day of blended existence. Before I lost the luxury of opinions on everything. And conviction. How I do miss my being convinced of something. But convictions die in the historian.”
“Is that why no historian has ever lived a million revs?” asked MinKey.
“While I am not an expert on that topic, your reasoning seems good.”
“Why give it up? Why become something that will kill you? Or if not kill you, then make you give up your life exhausted earlier than everyo
ne else? I don’t get it. It should be the one job that everyone would hate. Why become a historian?”
“To do something that leaves a mark.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
//Repair/Upgrade 1.003847 Status:
//Please enter date and time:
//Date value not valid
//Please enter date and time
//Date value not valid
//Please enter date and time
//Date value not valid
//Please enter date and time
//Date value not valid
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
“Hope you are doing well,” said Professor Wingut in his message. He fidgeted as he spoke.
Reminders were not the kind of message a historian likes, and sending one to another historian was almost never done.
“Just wanted to see how you are coming on the preliminary report. If there is an early draft of it, I want to read it. Let me help you make a report that will be given the support it needs. We need to send it out at least a day before the meeting. Anyway, that’s all. Please give my regards to your parents.”
The message was delivered to the device. Logs showed a successful handshake. And there the message sat, unread. At the end of his workday, Wingut began his end-of-day checks. Task list, reminders, big ideas, little ideas, comms. When he got to the comms, he noticed that his message had sat unopened.
Reminders are not the kind of message a historian likes to send, and upgrading one from a reminder to an IMPORTANT reminder is something almost never done, and one historian doing this to another has happened less frequently than Nash’s Comet. So it was with much reluctance that Wingut upgraded the message. He thought about the noticeable way the communicator would flash red when the message upgrade happened. It would also vibrate with increasing intensity. But for both of these reminders to happen, the comms device would have to be in contact with the person being reminded. Koven’s device was not.
Professor Wingut had an excellent dinner. It was one of his favorite vegetables, piol, lightly battered and fried, then covered in a spicy curry sauce and served with cashew nuts on top. He had a sparkling beverage from MedWaters. The soothing beverage undid the work of the curry on his sensitive stomach. His parents had had very little money to spend with the geneticists. They were philosophers.
When he got into his pajamas later that night, just before he selected the new holocasts on the most mundane aspects of horticulture that would lull him to sleep most nights, he decided to call a tech.
“Hello, this is Adam. How can I help you, Professor Wingut? It is an honor to speak with you, sir.”
“Adam, I’ve got an overdue historian,” Wingut replied.
“Sounds like a file from the Share,” Adam said, using the new term for library.
“Can you please confirm the location of Koven Modi on Earth 7?”
“Yes, sir, please give me a moment to look it up. Here, I’ve got it. Let me share that with you.”
A holocast started over a map of Earth 7.
“You will see, sir, that this is his location. Now if we zoom in we can see that his comms device is not with him. Here is the camera image from it.”
It was a room. Not large and not well furnished. The comms lay on a table along with a folded PPS.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” asked Adam.
“No. Thank you very much.”
“And sir, if I could ask you for one suggestion on how I can improve my performance?” asked Adam.
“Don’t ask that question,” said Professor Wingut.
“Thank you for your feedback,” replied Adam.
Wingut went to bed thinking about Indira. Years ago she had seemed so beautiful to him. Her exotic features and her warm smile untangled his awkward heart. Now, many revs later, he might have to tell her that her child was missing.
The next morning, right after the staff meeting, Wingut went to Longley’s office. He closed the door behind him.
“Koven Modi is missing. He’s detached from his comms on Earth 7,” said Wingut.
“Good morning to you too,” said Longley.
“Good morning. I felt I should get right to the point.”
“And how long has Modi been missing?” Longley asked.
“Overnight.”
“Just overnight?”
“But he is detached from comms,” Wingut retorted.
“Policy is clear that an agent can be considered missing only after two revs on Centrum Kath,” replied Longley.
“Is this about my support for giving planets to the Sociology Department?”
“Yes, to some extent it is, and also about your lack of loyalty,” replied Longley.
“Do you hear yourself? Lack of loyalty? Are you serious?”
“Completely,” replied Longley. “He will be considered missing only after two revs and not before then. Of course, you are allowed to assemble a rescue team in the meantime. But good luck with that. Klept has everyone available.”
Wingut stood in front of the desk in shock. A missing agent was considered a priority one event. Always, until now.
“If there is anything else you wish to discuss, then please state it, else leave. I have a busy day. Thank you,” and Longley looked up from his desk at Wingut and smiled in a plastic shrink-wrapped manner.
“I will go to Dean Midge,” Wingut said angrily.
“She is in meetings until late this afternoon. But you might try her at lunch,” said Longley, still smiling.
Wingut left Longley’s office. He smashed his fist into the door-opening console as he left. Sparks jumped under the smashed glass of the console.
When he got to the bottom of the building, he exited the large doors and walked down the sidewalk. He stared back at the building. Up in his office, he could see Longley sitting at his desk.
Wingut walked towards the Sociology building.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The transport device had to compensate for Allor and Ova together. It wasn’t a noticeable compensation, unless you examined the code that was running. The combined weight of the king and queen resulted in numerous sub-functions being run in order to adjust to the effect of additional weight on trajectory calculations. To the scientific mind, the additional two-tix delay before departure on the first journey was a telltale sign of the compensation. Fortunately, they weren’t standing at an airlock and jumping out, or else they might have experienced two tix of panic when nothing happened and they merely drifted out into space for a moment.
But they had arrived at Isla, the town in the middle of the great forest. It sat alone in a sea of trees. And as you would expect, the buildings were all of wood and sturdy. Even the people looked sturdy, as they all tended towards significant muscular development because the largest amount of work was in harvesting wood from the forest. “Saws,” as they were called, were the men and women that cut down the trees. They were easy to spot, as the sleeves of their shirts were short and had a zigzag pattern to the cut of the fabric at the end of the sleeves, like the pattern on the saws that they used.
“But if you are not a god, then what are you?” asked an old woman who could finally defecate without pain.
“I am a doctor,” Allor replied. “And your king.”
“I like you better as a king than a god. I never believed it anyway,” she replied.
“Good,” said Ova, and she handed the woman a gold coin.
“Come closer,” said Allor. “Let me explain,” he said as he raised the Remedium to the old woman’s head. It took a couple of tox before it was complete.
“Did we really come from the stars?” she asked him as she backed away from him, slightly frightened.
“A wise man once told me that asking for confirmation of things that I already know to be true is not my best line of questioning. Yes, we come from the stars.”
“And to think I have held my breath for over a thousand times. And for what? Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” the old woman said with
disgust.
“You did it for reasons that you thought were good at the time,” replied Allor.
“I was a damned fool,” said the old woman.
“I was too,” said Ova. “I thought that the Cult of Niddler might be for me when I was young. I loved the pillows in their temples.”
“What can I do to help?” asked the old woman.
“Lead by example,” said Allor. “Help others.”
“I will,” said the old woman. She smiled at Allor and bowed to the king and queen before leaving back into the crowd that surrounded them.
They were treating a child that had been blind since birth. Ova was using the remedium for the first time. Deep in the crowd of hundreds surrounding them came a scream. It was followed a moment later by another one, then another. Allor responded by grabbing Ova’s hand and turning the shield to the high setting. He wasn’t ever completely certain it would work with two people inside of it, but he wasn’t going to let his new bride be at risk.
They held hands and pushed their way through the crowd until they found the round void space around the man with the long blade in his hand. At his feet were two people, one dead, another dying.
“Put down the sword,” Ova demanded.
The tall man with strong muscular arms responded by rushing towards them and bringing the sword down hard against the protective shell. His sword broke. He turned and ran away. He had gotten no more than maybe ten maatars from them when an arrow arrived at the base of his skull. It came out at his throat and he fell to the ground dead. From high up in one of the trees a man waved down to them.
“The high priest ordered me to follow you and report back to him,” yelled the man in the tree.
“Then come down and tell me what you will report,” replied Allor.
“Shall I kill him?” asked Ova quietly.
“No,” replied Allor. “But it’s good to know that we are being watched.”
“We should kill him,” replied Ova.
“No, my darling. You are nothing if not loyal,” said Allor. He put his arm around her waist as he dialed the PPS back to the minimum setting.