“We should have plenty of time to complete the repairs and depart before then.”
“It isn’t that we’re going to get away, it’s that… look, you’re hardwired to not want people to die, right?”
“Processing… Hardwired isn’t quite right. I am coded to find large-scale loss of human, animal, and plant life to be suboptimal.”
“Well so am I, and unlike you I can’t just logic away the bad feelings as necessary for a mission. Knowing I can’t tell them doesn’t feel terribly heroic, and letting loads of people die is always bad.”
“It certainly does not fulfill the qualifications of fun. However, if there is really a forthcoming tragedy, that’s great news.”
He gritted his teeth as he came to the tricky process of creating the first corner. “We’re racing the clock to avoid getting caught in a historic unexplained massacre. I gotta say, that’s the worst good news I’ve ever heard.”
“Even so, it’s a good mission indicator. Our goal in this mission is to assure and protect the timeline from which we have originated. If this tragedy occurred in your timeline and it happens here, then it means history is unfolding as it did previously. That means our mission has not yet failed, and in fact may have already succeeded from the point of view of our native present.”
Lex considered her words. “I guess I can see where you’re going with that but… I don’t know. It’s just wrong. These people are going to die, and I know it is going to happen, but I can’t tell them or it’ll screw up history.”
He finished the first full cut and selected a pair of pliers to tug away the remaining hunks of metal.
“Excellent work. Keep track of the removed pieces. They are from the future and leaving them here is a bad idea.”
“Roger,” he said, pulling up a crate and carefully dropping the debris inside.
“Try not to feel responsible for the tragedy.”
“I don’t feel responsible. I just feel awful I can’t prevent it.”
“Oh, you probably are responsible, but try not to feel that way.”
“… I don’t follow. Why am I responsible?”
“Karter has already tried to kill you once. If he has Ma, by now she’s probably told him what we’re up to and how to find us. He’s always willing to kill without remorse, and as a visitor from the future himself, he probably wouldn’t want anyone finding out about him or us. That would explain all the mystery around the SSS 77 tragedy. It’s reasonable to assume, then, that the tragedy will happen precisely because we are present.”
Lex stopped measuring the hole he’d created and stared blankly forward as the words sank into his brain.
“You look distressed. You aren’t following my suggestion to not feel responsible for the tragedy.”
“We are responsible!”
“Yes. But don’t feel that way.”
“I can’t just… my brain doesn’t work like that…” He stood and clenched his fists, his heart racing in his chest and bile burning in the back of his throat. “We… killed these people.”
“Yes. Please calm down, Lex.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” he barked. “We’re supposed to be saving lives. I wouldn’t have signed up for this if I knew I was going to rain death upon complete strangers everywhere I went.”
“Lex, please lower your voice,” Coal said.
“These people didn’t have to die!”
“Is everything all right over there?” called one of the guards.
Lex turned, his face red and his eyes glistening. If he’d not had the face shield of his flight suit down, they certainly would have heard what he’d been saying. As it was they were probably more concerned with his suddenly violent body language.
Voices inside Lex’s head bellowed at one another, and he could feel his insides churning. He should tell them. It was the right thing to do… But if he did, it would change everything. It would save the lives of this crew, but it might set in motion a sequence of events that would make the robot apocalypse inevitable again and thus kill billions. And even if it didn’t, it would lock away his own future and leave him marooned, a stranger in a past that didn’t belong to him.
“These people are already dead, Lex,” Coal said calmly, a cool and collected voice in his helmet that cut through the tangle. “Nothing you can do is going to change that for the better. If history is unfolding as we have come to expect, it is equally possible that warning these people is what will seal their doom. We must behave logically. We must focus on the mission.”
Lex raised a shaking hand and, with agonizing effort, waved off the guard. He turned to Coal and picked up the measuring apparatus.
“Ziva died for this mission. Silo and Garotte or whatever he’d started calling himself died for this mission. These people have to die now,” he rumbled. “Whenever I work with you people, I always end up just a cog in a big, complicated mechanism. I’m always just one moving part in a plan that’s bigger than me. But now I’m caught in this current that’s dragging me through a damn river of death and I’m supposed to just smile and let all of this happen?”
“You don’t have to smile,” Coal assured him.
“How many people have to die, Coal? What exactly are acceptable losses?”
“Lex, the question is not: How many people will die? Everyone will die in time. The question is: How many people will live better lives? And we know that answer. We’ve seen what happens if we fail this mission. Society depends upon us having the strength and wisdom to play our part.”
He picked up the cutting torch and tried to will the tremors from his hands. “Sometimes strength feels a hell of a lot like cowardice.”
“You need to learn to separate how things feel from why they are necessary. It’s really easy. Would you like me to give you lessons?”
“I’m not sure that’s something I want to learn. Having more heart than brains is sort of what makes me me.”
“It’s frustrating but endearing, I’ll admit that.”
He removed the freshly cut piece. “Put that in the history books, I guess. ‘He may have let countless people die in pursuit of insane attempts to save his own future, but at least he was endearing in a frustrating sort of way.’”
“I don’t think history books have that degree of detail. Also, it would be best if our exploits were not recorded with any level of detail.”
He took a slow breath and moved the patch panel into place. “Let’s just get through this…”
As he applied the first tack welds to hold it in place, an odd tone trilled through the PA system.
“What now?” he muttered.
“Hey! That’s the data exchange warning. If that ship of yours is transmitting anything, shut it off. In thirty seconds we’re going to need complete radio silence to get a clean feed,” instructed one of the guards.
Lex shut off the torch. “You heard the man. Low-power mode and zero transmissions for a while, Coal.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you shortly. Please try not to become overcome with guilt during my silence.”
“Yeah… Good advice…”
One by one the various systems in the hangar began to dim and power down, concluding with the lights until the whole room was illuminated by a few scattered banks of blue LEDs. Lex popped his face visor and took a breath of fresh air. Or more accurately, somewhat less frequently reprocessed air.
“Hey, listen,” said the other guard. “This usually takes… I don’t know… twenty minutes, a half hour. We’re going to get messages from family and all on the feed. Usually we use the feed period as a break and then sort of have a get together to go over the messages. But we’re not supposed to leave you alone, so… you wanna go get something to eat while we’re waiting?”
“You sound like you’re asking him on a date, Dan,” said the other guard.
“Shut up, Bill,” the first guard, evidently Dan, replied. He turned back to Lex. “Seriously, though. I’ve got a birthday message coming in from my kids. I
don’t want to be standing in a hanger staring at you while that’s waiting on the servers.”
Lex shut his eyes. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go eat. But can you do me a small favor?”
“What?”
“Please don’t talk about your family…”
#
“And then, on her sixth birthday, I was off on the other side of the damn galaxy,” remarked Dan, the guard/stellar cartographer who had chosen to ignore Lex’s request to forgo family discussion. “No joke. Literally the opposite side.”
Lex had removed his helmet. In low-power mode and communication restriction he wouldn’t be able to talk to Coal anyway. The group was clustered into what they’d probably call the galley because this spaceship was a good deal more ship than most he’d been on. As they served up something they claimed was lasagna—Lex was skeptical about that, since in his entire life he’d not once had a version of the dish where the sauce was crunchy—they listed up all the gripes they had about the ship. Half the inner structure was made from iron salvaged from meteoroids. The air recycler’s humidifier was horribly calibrated, causing the air to be downright muggy, and corporate rules said there had to be an off-limits executive cabin despite no executives being on board. The recent refit had earned them artificial gravity, which they all agreed was a nice change from prior missions. Mostly, though, they talked about how often they were away from home and how badly they wanted to get back.
It was psychological torture in its most distilled form.
“You’re botching that word again, Dan. No one’s been to the other side of the galaxy yet,” remarked Bill.
“Well you know what I mean,” Dan said.
“I know what you mean, but that’s not what you said. This story would actually be worth telling for the fiftieth time if you were literally on the other side of the galaxy because you’d be bragging about how you blazed a trail through something like seventy percent of the galaxy and back without dying.”
Dan crossed his arms. “Still a good story.”
“We’ll let the Blueboy decide that,” Bill said.
“Can we not? Can we please not tell the story about your daughter?” Lex said.
“What’s your problem, Blueboy?”
“I just… I’ve got a lot on my mind. I’m super stressed right now. I just don’t want to hear about this stuff.”
“Blueboy’s sick of your stuff, and he hasn’t even heard it yet. You know what that means, Dan? Means your story’s bad.”
“You ask me, I’d say it means Blueboy’s an ass. Just for that, no one give him any of those fig bars we were saving for afters,” Dan said. “Though, he did nearly die today. That’s liable to make a man testy.”
“Actually, that part happens all the time.”
“If near death isn’t cause for alarm but hearing a story about my little girl has got you on edge, I think it’s safe to say you’re not living life right, Blueboy.”
“Why exactly are you calling me Blueboy?” Lex asked.
“You ever see a man past the tipping point on the road to suffocation? Lips turn blue. Yours were darn near periwinkle.”
“You wanna play the game?” Bill asked, glancing at his partner.
“Which one?” asked Dan.
“Which one you think I want to play with Blueboy here?”
“Oh, right. Sure.”
Lex raised an eyebrow. “What’s this about?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Bill said. “I’ll go first. Blueboy, where’d you get that ship of yours? Seems pretty slick.”
“I’d rather not say.”
“How’d you get your hands on all of those chips?”
“That’s kind of personal too.”
“What do you do for a living?” Dan asked.
“I’m a freelancer.”
Bill squinted at him, then leaned back and called to the woman, who was seated at the other table in the galley. “Can I get a ruling on this one?”
“A freelancer, past the rim? I’ll allow it.”
“I’m going to ask again, what’s this about?” Lex said.
Dan cleared his throat. “In every crew there’s always the guy—”
“Or lady,” Bill added.
“Or lady—but usually it’s a guy—who for one reason or another won’t talk about his personal life. Most of these fellas eventually figure out, unless you’re a secret agent or something, there’s nothing you’ve done that we haven’t already done or heard done. This is the fringe. This is where folks go when there isn’t a place in normal space to suit them. But these fellas always dodge the questions.”
“Or tell obvious lies,” Bill amended.
“Right, or tell obvious lies. So we play this game, see? We ask questions, back and forth. Regular stuff a regular guy wouldn’t mind answering. The guy who asks the first question that gets an honest answer wins.”
“Well Dan won then.”
“Nice try, but freelancers are folks you find between point A and point B,” Bill said. He poked the left edge of the table. “This here’s point A.” He poked the right edge. “This here’s point Z.” He poked the next table over. “This here’s where we are. If you’re a freelancer, you took a wrong turn about four days ago.”
“It would explain why he was low on air,” Dan said.
“We didn’t need an explanation for why he was low on air. The big holes in his ship were explanations of why he was low on air. What we could use are explanations for why there were big holes.” He turned to Lex. “Why are there big holes in your ship?”
“… I can’t say.”
“Your turn,” Bill said.
Dan leaned back and considered. “How about this one. Got a girl back home?”
“… Define ‘home,’” Lex said.
This produced a burst of laughter among the group.
“Wouldn’t have figured getting the runaround like that!” Dan said.
“Guys, listen. I just… You’ve got to trust me when I say I’m genuinely sorry, but I can’t… I just can’t tell you this stuff.”
“Do you listen to yourself when you talk, Blueboy? Because you just said, ‘trust me, I’ll keep lying to you.’”
“You could just end the game by telling the truth,” Bill said. “But do it on my turn. Now let’s see…”
The lights flickered back on.
“Never mind. Time for mail call,” Dan said.
“Okay, boys and girls,” barked a voice over the PA system. “Everyone to your terminals to get your messages.”
A cheer rose from those in attendance.
“But first we have three general dispatches,” the voice added.
The cheer collapsed into grumbling.
“First dispatch. Effective immediately, technician’s licenses will need to be re-upped every three tours instead of every two. Second dispatch. There has been a general recall due to a mal… heh. Typo here. A malfunktion, with a K, in a piece of equipment. Doesn’t give the specifics on what exactly it is, but technicians, be on the lookout for a something with serial number GMVD-5QU3E. Faulty firmware, prone to critical failure. When you folks find it, bring it to maintenance so it can be sent back for a firmware rewrite from the revision designer. It needs to have its… hell, techs, just come to the console and read the second damn dispatch. Third dispatch…”
The words filtered into Lex’s mind and became lodged there. He didn’t quite know what he was supposed to learn from the message, but there was no way a message would just happen to include the words funk and GMVD by coincidence.
“Hey, listen,” Lex said when the third dispatch had been read and the diners were clearing away their trays in preparation for the rare gift of a message from home. “Can I get a copy of that second dispatch?”
Bill glanced at him. “Why…?”
“I think I might have one of those… GM whatever’s on my ship. I’m already patching up the holes. Might as well pull out that thing.”
“What exactly is that thing they were
recalling?”
“I don’t know, it was just… on the… listen, it was a general dispatch, right? Not a secret or anything. Can I just get a copy?”
“Fine, fine,” Bill said.
He pointed to a wall-mounted console, one of several. During the meal they had been dark. When the power kicked back to full, they flicked on again, scrolled through a boot message, and then displayed a slideshow of seemingly random images, probably selected by the crew. Dan and the still unintroduced female on the crew had hurried to two of the consoles, but the remaining one was free as Bill thumbed through his messages on a hilariously antiquated predecessor to the slidepad.
Lex navigated the screens, taking a moment to appreciate how far user interface design had come in the thirty years between these monstrosities and the OSs he was accustomed to. Finally he found the message queue. How exactly he would transport the precise wording was a bit of a riddle, but he decided to pop on his helmet and snap a picture with the built-in camera.
“Whenever you guys are ready, I’d really like to get back to fixing my ship,” he said.
“Hold your horses, Blueboy. No one’s going anywhere until we’re through going over the mail call,” Bill said.
Lex clenched his fists, removed his helmet, and plopped down to finish his questionable lasagna. All around him, the crew gushed about news from families they would never see again and lives they would never return to. When they were through reading, they sat to enjoy the rest of their meals. This at least put their mouths to work on something other than more stories to assault Lex’s conscience. As they chewed, crunched, and slurped, a thought came to Lex’s mind. It might hurt, but as far as he could figure, it was the least he could do without utterly destroying literally everything he had ever worked for.
“Hey, uh…” he said, catching the attention of the others, “you guys were playing that game where you have me lie to you and all that. I’ve got a game too. Maybe you want to try it.”
“Nope,” said Bill.
“No,” agreed Dan.
“Mmm-mmm,” concluded the woman.
“I’m going to tell you the rules anyway. Basically, if you knew you only had one more message that anyone would ever hear, what would it be? What would you want people to know about you in a generation?”
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