by David Mack
This was where Wesley came when he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. A world with no life-forms more advanced than algae and cyanobacteria; a world whose atmosphere had only in the last million years been transformed by those tiny tireless organisms into one that contained enough free oxygen for him to breathe without mechanical or chemical assistance. He had fought the impulse to name this world; it wasn’t his right to impose anything upon it—not even something so seemingly innocuous. It was a pure world with an unwritten future.
But is it really? He thought of the Machine in the galaxy’s center. What if it chose to sacrifice this world and its suns to Abbadon? In a flash, all of this planet’s possible futures would vanish, the very fact of its existence annihilated at the subatomic level by the black hole. And there would be nothing he could do to stop it, just as there had been nothing he could do to help the Istarral, who had trusted him to save them. The majority of the galaxy’s star systems were uninhabited, but what if the Machine was targeting populated systems and planets? What if its chief criterion for condemning a world to oblivion was the presence or possibility of life?
Beneath his feet, an ocean tumbled into the abyss like energy vanishing into a singularity. Billowing mountains of vapor shrouded the nadir from sight, like an accretion disk masking a black hole with its brilliant halo of fire.
How could the Travelers just cut and run? Until today, he had thought so highly of his newfound partners in exploration. Watching them scatter like frightened prey at the first sight of the Machine had shaken his faith in them. They were the intuitive masters of space-time, capable of travel at the speed of thought. It made no sense to him that they would find themselves unable to match wits with an artificial intelligence, even one as powerful as the Machine obviously was. The Travelers possessed hundreds of millennia of accumulated knowledge. Why couldn’t they reason out an answer to this problem?
“Maybe that’s why the universe gave them you,” said a voice whose arrogance, drollery, and knowing sarcasm was all too familiar to Wesley.
He turned and regarded his visitor with a mirthless smile. “Hello, Q.”
Q, wrapped in the loose saffron robes of a Tibetan monk, hovered in midair a meter above Crusher’s eye line, his legs folded and arms posed in a lotus position. His smirk was infuriating. “Young Mister Crusher. My, how you’ve grown.”
Wesley was in no mood for Q’s signature brand of malicious mischief. He crossed his arms and fixed the nigh-omnipotent being with a glower. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought I was commiserating.” A disdainful sniff. “That’ll teach me to show empathy.”
His complaint almost made Wesley laugh. “I doubt you’ve ever felt one bit of real compassion for anyone, or anything. Why start now?”
“Because I’m as frustrated as you are.” Q waved at the sky. “One moment, everything’s fine and dandy. The next? The Machine. Instant apocalypse—just add a singularity.”
“I might as well ask the obvious question.”
Q cracked a knowing smile. “Why don’t I get rid of it with a snap of my fingers?” He turned an angry glare skyward, toward powers far removed. “The Continuum has forbidden me from meddling in mortal affairs for a while. I suppose they think they’re teaching me a lesson, or restoring some kind of cosmic balance. Whatever their reasons, my hands are thoroughly tied.”
His admission coaxed from Wesley a sigh that was equal parts disgust and exhaustion. “Great. My allies are useless.” He kicked a loose pebble off the ledge and watched it fall and disappear into the roiling clouds. “And yours just don’t care.”
“It’s terrible to be gifted with power and then barred from using it. Or to put your faith in the wisest beings you’ve ever met, only to learn that all their knowledge is worth nothing when it really matters.” Like an orbiting body, Q circled slowly in front of Wesley until he was sitting upon the air above the seemingly bottomless chasm. “So, is this your plan for averting galactic catastrophe? Wallowing in self-pity and kicking defenseless stones into the sea?”
Wesley’s scathing stare didn’t faze Q in the slightest. “Why don’t you do something? It’s not as if it’d be the first time you defied the Continuum.”
“Unlike your Convocation, the Continuum isn’t toothless. When you break with the Travelers, the worst they can do is stop sending you Christmas cards. If I break my vow to the Continuum while I’m still under sanction, I’ll find myself facing horrors the likes of which your limited consciousness can’t possibly imagine.” His features took on a determined cast. “Something needs to be done, that much is clear. But it’ll have to be you instead of me.” He drifted up and away, an unlikely angel on a lazy return trajectory.
Wesley called out, “How do I stop the Machine? What the hell am I supposed to do?”
Q favored him with a rakish grin. “Do what I always do—go bother Picard.”
5
The cruel irony of Akharin’s circumstances was not lost on him. Driven by loneliness after more than six millennia of watching his mortal companions wither and pass away, in the past two centuries he had undertaken a comprehensive study of the sciences of robotics, cybernetics, biomechanics, and artificial intelligence. Aided by his hundreds of lifetimes’ worth of resources, he had achieved revolutionary breakthroughs since departing Earth for the stars. After creating his holotronic AI masterpiece, Rhea, he had corrected the intrinsic flaw in his protégé Noonien Soong’s great invention, the positronic matrix, and reversed a cascade failure to resurrect the replicant of Soong’s late wife, Juliana. Akharin had, in recent years, even persuaded himself he preferred the company of synthetic beings to that of their organic forebears.
Then he was abducted by the Fellowship of Artificial Intelligence.
It was easy for him to deduce that his traveling prison, the sentient starship Altanexa, hadn’t played host to an organic passenger in ages. The vessel was eerily devoid of creature comforts that the immortal human man had come to take for granted. There was only one food synthesizer, which had been inactive for more than six hundred years before Akharin was brought aboard. Deprived of sustenance, his body had consumed nearly every last molecule of its stored fat—of which he’d had little to spare—leaving him haggard and emaciated by the time the ship’s crew of AI-imbued machines had fixed the defective food system.
Of course, he had never been in any real peril of dying from starvation. He’d tried to commit suicide that way once, sometime around 2380 BCE; the effort had accomplished nothing except that it had transformed him into a gaunt spectre that likely inspired early human myths of the walking dead, and it made him even more miserable than he had been.
Compared to now, those had been happy times.
There was neither day nor night in the tight confines of his cell. A flat, dull glow radiated constantly from a pale oval on his cell’s overhead, robbing him of the comfort of a steady circadian rhythm. His food was delivered at what he could only assume were regular intervals by one of the ship’s nonhumanoid occupants, a multilegged steel horror whose scuttling movements and teardrop-shaped core reminded him of a horseshoe crab.
Not much traffic passed his cell, but those members of the crew he had observed when he was first ushered aboard, as well as those who had happened past the brig, had given him what he suspected was a representative gander at their eclectic mix of shapes. Based on the number of interfaces and accommodations that seemed tailored to humanoids, he estimated that roughly half the ship’s complement was likely composed of bipedal androids with two arms, one head, and a general tendency toward bilateral symmetry. The rest looked to be a mélange of hovering, scuttling, shuffling creations not based on any life-forms he recognized.
Crisp footsteps echoed from the end of the corridor beyond his cell’s force field. The precise timing of the footfalls was one Akharin had learned to recognize after his months in captivity. Not wanting to give his captor the pleasure of seeing him resigned to his fate, he stood, did his best to sm
ooth the copious wrinkles from his shirt, and nodded at the hulking brute of an android with a face like a lab accident who stopped at his cell and faced him. “Gatt.”
“Hello, Akharin.” His voice was dark like tinted glass but lacked the warmth of organic inflections. “Have you reconsidered our request?”
Akharin folded his hands behind his back and shifted his stance. “No.”
“Disappointing.”
The Immortal steeled himself for the response that by now had come to seem routine: Gatt, his demand having been refused, would activate an unseen effect that would inflict staggering pain of countless varieties—hot, cold, sharp, suffocating—all at once, and seemingly upon every cell in Akharin’s body. The torture would last however long Gatt wanted it to; it was impossible for Akharin to gauge the passage of time when he was trapped in the agony field.
Then, to his surprise, Gatt asked, “Why?”
“Why what?” The vagueness of the query annoyed him.
“Why do you refuse to share the secret of AI resurrection?”
Not this again. “For the same reason I won’t tell you where to find Juliana: Because this isn’t something you were meant to find, and you wouldn’t understand it if you did.”
Gatt almost sounded offended. “I think you underestimate us.”
“No, I don’t. Your abilities aren’t the issue. The secret’s not some simple formula I can write down or pass along. It’s just something I can do. Even if I show you how I did it, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do the same thing. Or even that I could do it again.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I can prove it. Let me kill you, and I promise I’ll fail to bring you back.”
His sarcastic proposition garnered a hard look from the looming android. It took Gatt a moment to realize Akharin was mocking him and then to dismiss the remark as irrelevant. “Do not force me to use the agony field again.”
“Oh, now you’re squeamish about using it? Why? Your conscience acting up? Maybe you should get that looked at before it metastasizes into a full-blown soul.”
The android was unmoved by the insult. “It is irrational for you to resist. Our request is reasonable. We desire only to enjoy the same freedom from termination that you enjoy.”
“I can’t give you that. The technique I mastered only works on Soong-type positronic matrixes. I have no way of applying it to any other kind of AI neural structure.”
A scowl cut through Gatt’s scars. “I don’t believe you. I think you’re hiding the secret of life and death, and I’m not letting you leave this ship until you give it to me.”
Akharin’s retort was sharp and tinged with bitterness. “And what would you do with it? Share it with all of the galaxy’s sentient AIs? Or use it to control them?” He resisted the urge to grind his teeth in fury. “I’ve seen the true face of the Fellowship you claim to speak for, Gatt, and I know this isn’t it. Whoever you are . . . whatever you are . . . you don’t speak for them.”
“I never claimed to. I said only that we belong to the Fellowship. Nothing more.”
“Do you think the rest of the Fellowship would condone what you’re doing here?”
Gatt considered the question carefully. “I think they’ll understand.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It will be enough.” He looked at the bulkhead beside Akharin, and a holographic image appeared there, the product of an unseen emitter. From the hash of horizontal interference and snowy static emerged an overhead view of another compartment inside Altanexa. Seated on the edge of an unpadded metal bunk was Rhea McAdams, the cybernetic daughter Akharin had incepted more than a decade ago. Her comely fusion of European and Japanese physiognomy looked exactly as it had when they’d last parted company: perfect. Gatt looked at her and smiled. “Perhaps we should induce a cascade failure in her beautiful holotronic mind, and then let you show us your secrets as you bring her back to life.”
A cold fire blazed through Akharin’s soul. The rush of emotion was so fierce that it left him quaking from adrenaline overload. He clenched his hands into fists. His voice sank into a lower register laced with menace. “If you harm even one hair on her head, not only will I kill you, I will devote the rest of my immortal life to exterminating your kind from the universe.”
The android turned off the holographic projection. “I know you’re not given to idle threats. But neither am I. Do not test my resolve—and don’t force me to test yours.”
This was not a time for rash action. Knowing they had Rhea changed the stakes.
“As I said, I can’t simply describe how to reinitialize a failed positronic matrix. If you really want to learn how it’s done, I’ll have to demonstrate the technique. But I won’t harm a sentient mind to do it. That means I need to build a new, non-sapient matrix to experiment on.”
Gatt folded his beefy hands behind his back. “A work space can be arranged. But you will need to be closely supervised at all stages of your labor, to make sure you don’t abuse the tools and materials we provide. Will such terms be acceptable?”
Akharin nodded. “I’ll need to build a few devices of my own design. I’ll draw up a list of necessary components. As soon as you procure the necessary items, we can get started.”
“Prepare your list. We’ll do the rest.” The android moved as if to leave, then he paused. His demeanor took a profound turn for the ominous. “Be warned, Akharin: If this demonstration turns out to be a ruse or a stalling tactic, it’ll be your daughter who pays for your defiance. And I assure you . . . the price will be very dear, indeed.”
* * *
Shimmering curtains of heat distortion veiled the distant intersection of burned-white sky and parched white plains. Wind-whipped dust traversed the salt flat while Data sat and watched.
Overhead, the blazing orb of day made its slow transit, baking the planet’s equatorial desert. Data’s thermal sensors registered the noontime local air temperature at 58.5 degrees Celsius, with a relative humidity of less than one percent. The past two nights the temperature had plunged to just less than five degrees Celsius, but the temperature shifts had no significant effect upon him. Motionless, he stood his ground like the last relic of Ozymandias, the frozen likeness of a great man long gone, encircled by lone and level sands.
Burdened with a surfeit of time, he reflected upon his mother’s parting observation. Does my mission to bring back Lal merely echo my father’s obsession to reincarnate me? At first, he saw no reason to think the question mattered. Had he been able to prevent Lal’s death, he would have. If the knowledge and technology now existed to reverse his failure, why should he not pursue it? But the longer he ruminated on the subject, the more he began to doubt his decisions—and almost all his doubts sprang, he realized, from his new wellspring of human emotions.
Who am I to play God? What if I bring her back, only to lose her during the procedure? Will I be able to stand losing her again? The last question haunted him. Thinking ahead to Lal’s resurrection had dredged up memories of her death—but this time, replaying the moments from his perfect memory, he was nearly overwhelmed by panic and grief as he felt her life slip from his fingers. Her death was no longer just another empirical fact in his database; it had become an open emotional wound, a potentially fatal weakness in his psychological armor.
Ripples of movement inside the wavering mirage interrupted Data’s moment of introspection. He increased the magnification of his visual receptors and focused them on the far-off disturbance. Creeping over the hard-baked plain was an arachnoid shape, little more than an eight-legged silhouette on the sun-blasted landscape. Its origin was a mystery to Data, but its destination was clear: it was moving on a direct heading for his position.
He fixed his gaze upon it, and at regular intervals he adjusted his visual receptors’ settings to keep it in sharp focus. As it traversed the salt flat, he gained a clearer look at its details. It was mechanical and not the least bit disguised as anything organic
. Its gears and servos were apparent, and its outer skin was a brilliantly polished shell of durable metal with a mirror-quality finish. In addition to its eight legs, it sported six visual receptors that he could see—four placed at ninety-degree intervals around its central ridge, and one on both its dorsal and ventral surfaces. Whoever had designed and built it had meant it to have omnidirectional visual acuity.
The robotic spider came to a halt less than three meters from Data’s feet.
Data smiled at it. “Thank you for coming.”
His full-spectrum sensors detected the tingle of the drone’s sensor beams studying him. Then a tiny emitter on the robot’s back projected a three-dimensional hologram of a shadowy humanoid figure whose dimensions were obfuscated by funhouse-mirror-style distortions and whose features were masked by profound blurring. Its voice was similarly disguised, rendered as a mechanical monotone generated by vibrations in the spider’s shell. “Hello, Noonien.”
They think I’m my father, Data realized. They must not know he gave up this body he built for himself in order to resurrect me. He had anticipated this misunderstanding and had even considered exploiting it for advantage over the Fellowship, but every simulation he had pursued on that tactic had led to undesirable conclusions. He shook his head. “No. I am Data.”
The tall shadow hesitated, its affect one of uncertainty. “What do you want?”
“You know who I am, yes?”
A slow, grudging nod. “We remember you. Why did you contact us?”
“I am looking for a human who I believe is in the Fellowship’s custody. He has gone by many names, including Micah Brack, Flint, and Professor Emil Vaslovik. I have reason to think his current nom de voyage is Akharin. Do you know where he is?”