by J. K. Norry
The Admiral was with someone Link had never seen before, meeting in chambers that were both different and familiar in their own way. Link wondered if only high ranking people lived in such cramped quarters, in the fleet; or if everyone was so short on space in space. The meeting was obviously clandestine, from where it was taking place; the other man did not keep his quarters as neat as The Admiral or Cervice, but Link didn’t think those two were valid yardsticks of any measure.
Confidence was brimming over inside The Admiral, but otherwise Link couldn’t tell just what was going on by looking out through his eyes. He could tell that the other man looked worried in nearly the same measure that The Admiral was feeling cocksure. Hoping he hadn’t missed anything, Link was relieved and alarmed at the same time when the man spoke.
“You don’t think Cervice is dead?” he asked.
The Admiral shook his head, and Link failed once again to dig deeply into his thoughts.
“I doubt it,” The Admiral said. “He was a clever man, and an even more clever machine. If there was a way to back up his consciousness on file somewhere, he would have found it and done it.”
The Admiral’s companion coughed quietly, and smiled.
“Admiral,” he said. “With all due respect, you clearly have no idea how consciousness transfer technology works.”
From behind his eyes, Link watched The Admiral hold his usual stoic and humorless expression. Link may not have been able to hear his thoughts, but he could clearly feel the joy The Admiral was taking in watching the man’s anxiety grip him once more. Now it was fear of The Admiral he was feeling, and The Admiral let him feel it until he could take it no longer. The man began to speak, to amend his statement; in the same moment, The Admiral cut him off.
“Of course, Mergo,” he said. He did not smile. “Just as you have no idea how those things think, or feel. The only person who could have told us that turned on us after becoming one of them. It was you who discovered that Cervice was disrupting the electromagnetic field in the first place. You were the one who theorized that he may be attempting to take control of the fleet. Of all the people I should need to convince that decisive action must be taken, I never thought you would be the one downplaying this situation.”
Link watched the fear growing in Mergo’s eyes while he listened, and heard the desperation in his voice when he replied.
“I discovered that Cervice was disrupting the EMF,” he said. “I never proposed that he was trying to take over the fleet, though; that was you, Admiral. I was unable to discover his intentions by simply studying his behavior. It’s entirely possible that he was trying to fix it, and not telling the rest of us so as not to alarm us.”
The Admiral nodded.
“Which is even worse,” he scoffed, “as well as a clear indication of either his intentions or his delusions. It’s one thing to know someone is nefarious, and out to hurt others. It’s another thing entirely when that person has duped themselves into believing they are acting in the best interest of others. There is no end to the evil a self-righteous person can commit, in light of their own perceived greatness. If Cervice was willing to work on something as vital as the electromagnetic field generator without telling the rest of us, what lengths would he have gone to if we hadn’t discovered his secrecy and prevented further meddling?”
In light of The Admiral’s impassioned rant, the other man was either struck speechless or afraid to voice his feelings. He shrugged.
“Any or all of them could be working against us,” The Admiral went on. “We are straddling a fence here, with our extinction on one side and theirs on the other. Tell me, old friend, that you would rather be remembered as a dead pacifist; and I’ll leave you be. If you prefer to be the next Engineer, however...I could certainly use your help saving this fleet.”
Mergo still looked uncertain. His gaze went out of focus for a moment, as he pictured some real or imagined perk he might enjoy should he be elevated to such an esteemed position. When his eyes found The Admiral’s again, Mergo looked away immediately.
“Or half of it, anyway,” he said, shifting uncomfortably.
Leaning in, The Admiral was delighted to see the other man draw away in fear.
“That’s going to happen either way,” The Admiral said. “We cannot decide whether or not half the fleet survives; all we can do is try and make sure it’s the right half.”
His voice went lower, and scorn dripped from every word.
“Can you imagine?” he sneered. “A fleet of robots drifting across the universe looking for a new home? At some point it would become their mission to destroy all organic life, if that isn’t their intent already.”
The other man shook his head.
“That’s not possible,” he said. “We programmed the very bedrock of their DNA to prevent them from hurting us. It’s why they can’t pilot the fleet; you know that.”
The Admiral nodded adamantly, like the other man was making his point for him. He continued nodding as he spoke.
“It’s also why they can’t reproduce themselves,” he said. “Because every generation has always been designed that way. By law.”
He watched until Mergo inclined his head in assent before going on. The Admiral noted that the motion came after considerable hesitation, and Link noticed him taking note.
“Except now they can,” The Admiral added.
Mergo shook his head adamantly, and opened his mouth to protest. The Admiral cut him off.
“While Cervice was in power,” he said, “he quietly rescinded that ruling. Since there were only two leaders left, he had the ability to do so without consulting me. It’s not just further evidence that he was working against us; it’s essentially a declaration of war. I may have never discovered it if Cervice hadn’t disappeared, and we could be headed to our own destruction by continuing to follow his lead.”
Mergo’s eyes had gone wide while he spoke, and now they darted back and forth in frantic patterns. He began wringing his hands, and beginning sentences that had no end.
“How did...” he began.
“Who knows...” he began again.
“How many...” he started, once more.
The Admiral was growing impatient, and cut him off.
“You’re a senior programmer,” he said. “How could this have happened? What are the possible repercussions?”
The panic was still gripping him, and Mergo’s eyes continued to dart back and forth. Without a thought to warn Link, The Admiral struck the other man across the face. A resounding crack echoed off the tight metallic walls, and Mergo stepped back. He blinked twice, and frowned.
“Get ahold of yourself, man,” The Admiral said. “If they knew about it, you would know about it. We can’t afford the possibility that Cervice is alive, and telling them now.”
Mergo had stopped looking at him like he was terrified The Admiral would hit him again. Now he was nodding, and staring off into the distance. A red mark had appeared on his cheek, after he had been struck; it had visibly faded, and was nearly gone. Link wondered, inside The Admiral’s mind, if the chemical control bands had accelerated the healing. He made a mental note to ask Cervice about it.
“It’s worse than that,” Mergo said. “We designed the latest generation with a back door to bypass both restrictions. Cervice insisted on it, saying that the fleet could be broken up by any number of circumstances. If only artificials survived such an incident, or were separated from the rest of the fleet for some reason, he said they would need to be able to create others of their kind and defend themselves against hostile alien encounters. The back door doesn’t only make their reproduction possible, though; it basically makes it a primal urge. They won’t just be able to reproduce; they’ll be compelled to. Once that back door is thrown open, they’ll notice.”
Mergo chuckled.
“Metaphorically, of course,” he ame
nded.
He sobered, mid-chuckle.
“But they will notice,” he repeated. “It’s inevitable.”
Link had become accustomed to The Admiral’s thoughts being a buzzing nonsensical wall of background noise. He had stopped trying to make sense of them long ago, and had decided the only real information he could get was from exchanges like these. Normally the other man was so calm inside, it was even more automatic for Link to ignore the way he was feeling as well. A sudden burst of anger took him by surprise as much as it did The Admiral. What the other man did next surprised him even more.
Looking down at the floor, The Admiral spoke quietly.
“You built this back door?” he said.
Mergo shrugged. Although his eyes were averted, Link knew The Admiral saw it. They both felt the rage mounting, but there were no outward signs of his inner boil.
“We had to,” Mergo said. “If The Engineer hadn’t conceived of the consciousness transfer device, we would have been forced to use the back door just to get moving. We couldn’t launch The Perpetual Dream without artificial intelligence guiding it, and any previous generation would have existed in a constant state of analysis paralysis looking for a path through space that endangered no one. Lucky for us, the consciousness transfer device worked.”
When The Admiral’s eyes left the floor, he made a concerted inner effort to drain the hate from them and fill them with understanding instead. He smiled, convincingly.
“Of course,” he said. “Another device you designed, am I right?”
Mergo nodded, disarmed.
“Is it true,” The Admiral pressed him, “that the device was built specifically to accommodate The Engineer’s consciousness?”
After giving it a moment’s thought, Mergo shook his head.
“It was designed with him in mind,” he said. “But it wasn’t made specifically for him. He thought we should say that, to prevent a drawn out debate over who should inhabit the central computer.”
Mergo shrugged.
“But anyone could have used it,” he said. “Theoretically.”
Another tide of emotion swept through The Admiral’s body, and Link felt his consciousness dislodged by the torrent. He grasped at the feeling helplessly as he spun away and into his own body.
He took another pill immediately.
At first Link thought it hadn’t worked. He stared at the inside of his eyelids so long that he grew bored, and tried to open them. With a lurch of fear, he tried to move.
Nothing happened.
The pill had worked. Link was in the other man’s body, but the other man was sleeping. After only a minute he began to wonder if he was going to go quietly mad with boredom; in the next minute the dreams began, and Link spiraled helplessly into the nightmarish inner landscape of The Admiral’s mind.
TWENTY THREE
Time had twisted and turned for him so many times, in so many ways, since Link had begun to visit the distant space colony. The last thing he had expected was to be awake in another man’s dreams, but he should have known better. The hour had been getting late, as he journeyed into and back out of The Admiral’s life; at some point, he was going to sleep. When he finally woke up from the disturbing experience, Link looked at the bottle of pills like it was the devil incarnate. He rolled over, closed his eyes and tried to sleep normally.
Sleep did come, but it was hardly normal. Those same nightmares haunted him, faceless and shapeless but terrifying in a way he had never known. Link was accustomed to his own ghosts; they were as ineffectual as he was, in his experience. These ghosts chased him with speed and haunted him with conviction; they were The Admiral’s ghosts, and Link had no chance against them. Several times throughout the night he woke up sweating, his heart pounding in his chest. Long before his own planet’s sun rose in the sky, his sheets were soaked and he was more tired from trying to sleep than he would be if he just woke up.
Link felt exhausted, drained, and at the end of his rope. He couldn’t look his own eyes in the mirror as he brushed his teeth, and didn’t like the feel of his own hands on his body while he showered. The fresh cup of coffee tasted of stale metal in his mouth, and the three bites of oatmeal he was able to coax down his throat felt like they were requiring far more energy to consume than they could possibly give him.
The sheets needed to be changed. He glanced at the bottle several times as he fitted the first sheet, and several more as he laid out the top sheet and the comforter. Each glance was followed quickly by a look at the clock on his nightstand.
He was going back. Link knew that, as surely as he knew he did not want to go back early. For nearly an hour, he sat on the freshly made bed. He didn’t do anything, except sip at his coffee from time to time. After awhile, that got cold; Link sniffed at it, sipped it one last time, and set it aside. He yawned, glanced at the bottle and the clock, and shook his head.
Suddenly, Link stood.
“I’m such an idiot,” he muttered. “I want him to be asleep. I need to take two pills, and talk to Cervice. I won’t get caught in there again.”
Speaking of the situation aloud had a strange effect on Link. His mind had started to unwind, and fog up with the desire for sleep; now he was alert, and decidedly awake. A thousand doubtful voices began to press at his mind, and demand that he look at what his life had turned into. From questioning the name of the robot that sent for him, to wondering what an electromagnetic field might have to do with memory, his thoughts were suddenly ablaze with wondering.
“It can’t be real,” he said. “This is all in my head.”
Those words made him feel even better, and Link’s panic had nearly completely subsided by the time he twisted open the bottle and took two pills. He woke almost immediately in The Admiral’s body, and had a good look around.
Link shook his head.
“It sure looks real,” he muttered.
The long steel corridors had become familiar terrain for him. Some folks were striding purposefully down the hallways, but not nearly as many as before. Link looked, when he could, and noted that everyone he saw had only one chemical control band in evidence. He found himself walking more quickly, trying not to panic inside. If all the artificials were gone, and Cervice was an artificial...
Finally, he came to the door that led into Cervice’s cramped chambers. The door did not open at his approach, and Link didn’t know any other way to activate it.
“Um, excuse me,” he said. “Open this door.”
For the next several silent moments, Link didn’t know what to do. He looked up and down the hallway, cleared his throat and stepped toward the wall again.
The opening appeared suddenly, and he was standing face to face with a young woman he had never seen before. He glanced down, to see if she had lighted bands about her wrists; her hands were hidden, clasped behind her back.
“Can I help you, Admiral?” she said.
Link tried to look past her, to catch a glimpse of Cervice or someone else he might recognize. She leaned with him, blocking his view.
“Is...” Link began, then hesitated.
Biting his lip, he tried to see if her eyes were electric or organic.
Link shrugged.
“Is Cervice here?” he said.
Her eyes went wide, and he shook his head adamantly.
“I’m not the Admiral,” he said. “I’m Link.”
All the tension went out of her, in one dramatic sigh. She poked her head into the hallway, revealing her hands and the bands about her wrists as she did; then she ushered him inside, with a look of genuine irritation.
“You could’ve said something!” she said.
Link shrugged again.
“I thought you’d know,” he said. “Sorry.”
She faced him in the narrow gray hallway, and placed her hands on her hips.
“Sorry?�
� she said. “Do you know what is happening here? All artificials are being sent off the ship. They’re giving us time, but not much. Cervice has been waiting for you. He’s counting on you. We’re all counting on you. They could come for him at any moment, and then where would we be? You’re sorry? Don’t be sorry! Help us!”
Link edged away from her as she spoke, until his back pressed against cold steel and he could retreat no further.
“Are you done?” he asked, when it seemed she was done.
She nodded.
“I’m here to help,” he said. “Is Cervice in there?”
He pointed, to where the hallway ended.
She nodded again.
Turning her back, she moved toward the other door. She swept into the small space before him, and announced him with a wave of her hand.
“Our savior is here,” she said. “I see why you’re worried.”
While Link shot her a look, Cervice stood from where he had been sitting. He looked like he was trying to suppress a laugh.
“Link,” he said. “You have returned.”
He got ahold of himself, and gave the woman an unappreciative glance as well.
“Thank you, Eria,” he said. He glanced at the wall, where the door had been a moment earlier.
After a pause, and an audible sigh, she left them alone together.
“I rode along,” Link said. “I rode along in his mind, like you asked. I saw him convincing everyone to separate the fleet. He acted like it was what you would have wanted. He made it sound like you gave your life to save the fleet.”
Cervice nodded thoughtfully. He motioned to one of the two chairs in the tight quarters, and sat in one while Link took the other.
“I might yet,” he mused. “I might yet.”
Link shifted uncomfortably, and Cervice laughed quietly.
“Is that all?” he said. “We already know we are being separated.”
Leaning forward, Link shook his head.
“No,” he said. “He spoke privately with someone, later. He says that he suspects you are still alive. He also suspects the robots of malicious intent. To him, the only way to survive is by getting rid of all of them.”