by M. D. Cooper
“That’s the problem,” Fugia said. “I’m not sure. What I do know is that I can’t leave Petral in her current state. I need to find a facility that can reverse the procedure. We’re going to need their help. We need the AI’s help.”
“That’s going to be a Heartbridge facility.”
“That seems likely. If we find such a clinic, it’s also possible we could reverse your surgery as well. If you and Lyssa were not bound together like you are, we might find ourselves with more options.”
“I suppose,” Andy said. He waited for Lyssa to interject but she remained quiet. “What are you asking exactly? Do you want me to take part in this meeting? I got you to the Cho, Fugia. That was our deal.”
“Yes, I think you should be there. Whether you appreciate it or not, Captain Sykes, you are part of this movement.”
Andy stared at her. She looked like a diplomat for some imaginary country in her severe suit, standing as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders. Maybe both impressions were true.
“The first thing I’m going to do is get Tim to the hospital. I’m going to talk to the doctors there and find out what he needs. Once that is done, I’ll think about helping you with your meeting.”
“If you don’t do this, I don’t think you’ll get anywhere near Proteus,” Fugia said. “Ngoba Starl didn’t explain to you what kind of entities we’re dealing with, Andy. These are minds that could destroy all of Sol if they set themselves on that course.”
“And Hari Jickson seemed to think they would want Lyssa?”
“Apparently so.”
“Then why do they need convincing for me to take her there?”
“That’s my assessment. I’ll know more after the meeting.”
“What does a senator from the Anderson Collective have to do with any of this?” Andy asked. He felt like he was turning a chess board to see the whole game and still missing pieces.
“How long until we can transport to the orbital?”
Andy decided not to address Fugia’s brush-off. “Another hour and a half. We’ll need a little time to get the ship ready. They said we can transfer as soon as we’re stable in the parking orbit.”
“I don’t understand all your pilot talk.”
“I think you do,” Andy said.
Fugia raised her eyebrows again in mock reproach. “I’m glad we’re working together, Captain Sykes.”
“Right,” Andy said. “Are we?”
“We seem to be.”
Andy shifted his gaze to the display to check their approach status. “Let me ask you something, Fugia. Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“All of this. What’s in it for you?”
Fugia sighed, adjusting the front of her suit. “I was born on Cruithne. You’ve been there. You know what it’s like. I learned very quickly that if someone can take advantage of you, they will. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and I did. But what I learned is that the rest of Sol isn’t much different. At least on Cruithne they don’t lie about it. Through a convoluted series of events, I came into the ownership of a Cruithne gray parrot. It was an AI. We think it’s bad enough to exploit an AI, trapping one in a strange body with warped communication skills is far worse.”
She smiled to herself. “She was my friend, and I decided I wanted to help her. I didn’t realize how far the path would take me.”
“Where is she now?”
“She died,” Fugia said.
“AI can die?”
“Of course they can. And don’t ask me if we can just make a copy. Can we make a copy of you and have it be the same the instant the new version begins interacting with the world? Experience creates intelligence, Captain Sykes. That’s what I believe. Each of us is unique, even clones, even a human version of Theseus’ Ship, remade over time with mechanizations and artificial neurons and other things humans use to hide from their mortality.”
“Like I said, we’ll get Tim to the medical facility and then I’ll go to the meeting.” Andy shifted to his Link, asking Lyssa,
She answered quickly, which indicated she had been listening after all.
“We’ll go,” Andy told Fugia. “I’m half-worried we’re going to find out they were behind the accident on Ceres and I’ve somehow joined a group of terrorists.”
“Anything is possible,” Fugia said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
STELLAR DATE: 10.01.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies, Callisto Orbital Habitat (Cho)
REGION: Callisto, Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
Tim made a sniffling sound and Brit perked up, studying him. He was still staring at the ceiling and didn’t look any different than he had an hour before. She reached over to adjust one of the autodoc’s IV lines.
Not long after Cara’s party, they had moved him to the autodoc in the medical bay and he now had several intravenous lines attached. The medical facility Andy had contacted on the Cho wanted as much neural data as they could gather, so two tracking pads on either temple fed information back to the autodoc’s control center. In the two years since she had left Sunny Skies, Brit had nearly forgotten how terrible the ship’s medical facilities were. There wasn’t even a holographic nurse to walk them through the IV procedures.
Kylan sat on a stool on the other side of the tiny room, long black hair in desperate need of washing. All the striking beauty that made Petral stand out looked faded and pained now. The boy staring out through her piercing blue eyes seemed more lost than when Brit had first met him.
Brit had been back on Sunny Skies just over a week. It already felt like a year. Cara refused to talk to her and Andy acted like she were some visiting dignitary. Fran didn’t avoid her but didn’t seek her out either, and Brit didn’t know if she was grateful for that or irritated. The immediate spike of jealousy she’d felt seeing Andy embrace another woman had been an emotion she hadn’t felt in so long that she almost didn’t recognize it. She knew she had taken Andy for granted but also knew that she may never have loved him the same way he loved her. He seemed more comfortable now pretending she had become someone else entirely. His wife was dead. Maybe she was.
She also felt shut out of the major action on the ship, which was Fugia Wong and Senator Walton’s upcoming meeting on the Cho. Brit hadn’t had a chance to talk to Fugia alone. After the meeting on Ceres, she had thought Fugia would be pleased to see her, or would want to include her in whatever she was planning. The opposite seemed to be true.
If Tim hadn’t been in this state and if Andy hadn’t pulled away to pilot the ship, Brit told herself she would be banging on Fugia’s door right now, demanding to know what was going on. This was the culmination of everything she had been working on for two years. The Heartbridge projects to develop AI from human stock was only one root of a tree with branches that spread all across Sol. As the tree took shape, it was obvious the story was much bigger than she had imagined.
“You look sad,” Kylan said.
Brit glanced at him with irritation. “You should look in a mirror,” she snapped.
The truth was, while she had imagined returning to the Sunny Skies, this wasn’t anything like the fantasy. Cara was turning into the young woman she had always hoped she might become, but that young woman hated her mother. Brit didn’t especially get along with her own mother so she understood those feelings. She just didn’t think she would find herself repeating the same scripts from her own childhood. Her mother had left mentally and Brit had spent most of her teens resenting her for it; she supposed Cara had every right to feel as she did.
What had she gained in two years? Heartbridge had lost clinics but was still in business. They were still producing their weaponized AI. Maybe she had set them back with the theft from Clinic 46 but she had no way to know.
Brit thought about the power armor standing empty down in the cargo bay. She acknowledged to herself what she had known back when she’d left Andy on High Terra with the kids: she wasn’t good at family life. She had only felt right in the TSF and later in special operations. She had tried, but family life hadn’t worked, and she didn’t know how to tell the people who loved her that she couldn’t give them what they wanted. Words didn’t come as easily to her as to Andy. If she faced a choice between struggling to find the right thing to say and leaving, she would leave.
“How’s he doing?”
Brit was surprised by her daughter’s voice. She looked to the doorway to find Cara standing there with a book in her hands.
“He’s made a few sounds but not much has changed. Physically, the system says he’s fine. He’s even showing advanced neural activity so it’s not a coma. He’s just not responding to anything.”
“Dad says you found a hospital?”
“As soon as we land, I’m going to take him down.”
“Dad’s not going with?”
“He says he is. We’ll see what happens once we get there.”
“Why wouldn’t he go?”
“I’m here,” Brit said. “I can take care of Tim.”
Cara looked like she wanted to roll her eyes. Instead she looked down at the book. “I brought you Tim’s favorite book. He’s memorized a bunch of the poems.”
Brit took the book as Cara held it out and turned it over in her hands. “Emily Dickinson?” she said. “Where did Tim get this?”
“The scientist who made Lyssa gave it to us. I think it’s weird but Tim loves it.”
“You think he might respond if I read some of them?” Brit asked, flipping through the book.
“Maybe. I can if you don’t want to.” She glanced at Kylan on the other side of the room and then back at Brit.
Brit handed her the book. “I’d like to hear you read.”
Cara nodded. She moved closer to the head of the bed and reached down to smooth the hair out of Tim’s eyes. Brit was surprised by how much tenderness Cara showed. The kids had still been fighting like cats and dogs when she’d left. The angle of Cara’s face made her look like a younger version of Andy. She had his eyes.
Cara turned to a page with its corner folded over and started reading a series of short poems that seemed to center around a garden. Imagery of grass and animals filled the short lines, often turning on some visual image.
Finally, Cara turned to a page later in the book and read the lines, “Because I could not stop for death.”
Kylan shrieked. Brit turned to find his eyes wide with terror as his lips twisted.
“Hey!” Brit said sharply. “What’s wrong with you?”
The blue eyes went distant and then Kylan’s face changed, grew calm, as the boy sat up straighter on the stool.
“Petral?” Cara asked.
The transformation amazed Brit. She watched the slumped form that indicated a sloppy young man shift into a proud woman with her shoulders back, head held straight. Petral ran her hands through her hair, pulling it back from her face, and her cheekbones stood out, her eyes piercing. Her demeanor became controlled, poised. She smiled at Cara.
“Happy Birthday, Cara,” Petral said. “I’ve been wanting to tell you that.”
Cara stared at her. Dropping the book on a nearby shelf, Cara slid around the bed to wrap Petral in a hug. “Thank you,” she said, followed quickly by, “You don’t smell good.”
“Believe me, I know,” Petral said.
“I thought you were gone,” Cara continued, stepping back. “Kylan made it sound like you were gone.”
“Lyssa could explain it more,” Petral said. “But the line you just read is a command sequence for the Weapon Born. Jickson gave you the book for a reason.”
“That’s Tim’s favorite poem.”
Petral looked at Tim on the bed. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have done anything for him.”
“What happened to Kylan?” Brit demanded.
Petral turned her gaze to her. “Hello, Brit,” she said. “I guess I should thank you for getting me off that station. I’m disappointed you didn’t kill that fucker Cal Kraft. But then I couldn’t do it myself, so I guess I’m over that for now.”
Brit was irritated by Cara’s grin. It was obvious she idolized this woman.
“Have you been there the whole time?” Cara asked. “Were you able to see what Kylan saw?”
“Yes. It was like shouting at people on the other side of a window. Kylan might not seem very bright on the outside, but he’s got an amazing amount of mental resilience. He’s going to try and shut me out again.”
“Can we stop him?” Cara asked.
“Take him out of my head.”
“Can you talk to him like Dad talks to Lyssa?”
“Our connection doesn’t seem to work as well. I blame shoddy workmanship. Jickson might have been an alcoholic but he knew what he was doing. And he invented the procedure. Kraft just plugged me into the autosurgeon and ran a program. Since neither Kylan or me want to share being in charge, one of us has to be dominant. He tricked me at first. It’s not going to happen again.”
“Cal tricked you or Kylan?” Brit asked.
“Cal Kraft. That command sequence is like a freeze button. If you don’t know how to respond, someone can step in and make choices for you. I didn’t realize it until too late.”
“You’ve been shut out of your own body,” Brit said.
“Yes.” Petral narrowed her eyes in a look of disgust. “Luckily Kylan isn’t much of a deviant beyond poor personal hygiene.”
“Yuck,” Cara said.
“Don’t think too hard about the possibilities,” Petral said. “It only gets more gross.”
Brit lowered her face, looking at Tim. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help,” she said. “I didn’t realize exactly what had been done to you. I just thought Kylan was some experiment they had botched.”
“He is,” Petral said, grimacing. “You know his mother is head of Carthage Logistics, right? He might be the most valuable ghost in Sol. In any other circumstance, I might pity him.”
“Petral saved us at Cruithne, Mom,” Cara said. “And at Mars 1. We wouldn’t have gotten out of either place without her.”
“I saved myself and you were along for the ride,” Petral said. “Don’t make me sound like a hero or anything.”
Cara’s face fell slightly. “You took the shuttle back so we could get away from Mars 1.”
“Fugia had something to do with you getting away, too. Be sure to thank her.”
Brit realized that Petral didn’t want to outshine her in front of Cara. She certainly seemed ready to change the subject.
“Cara,” Brit said. “We still have an empty set of quarters, don’t we? Why don’t you take Petral down to one of the empty rooms and make sure the shower works so she can get cleaned up. Maybe see if there’s another shipsuit somewhere she can wear.”
“That would be much appreciated,” Petral said. She stood and stretched, immediately taller than Kylan had ever seemed.
For a second, Brit wondered what kind of acting skills it would take to trick them all that Kylan really existed. It wasn’t like they had some way to prove the AI was suppressed inside Petral other than getting her to submit to a scan. Why though? If Petral’s goal had been to penetrate the Heartbridge station, why would she have left with Brit when she appeared?
She stopped herself, realizing she was frustrated with Cara and the situation was Brit’s own fault. She’d had something here on Sunny Skies and she had walked away from it. She might get a part of it back, but life would never return to the way it had been. The dream she had convinced Andy to buy into—that they could raise a family away from the influences of Terra, Mars, the JC—had all been fantasy. She could blame him for believing in her or she could own up to her own failed dreams and try to understand why she had wanted such a l
ife in the first place. She had proven to herself that it didn’t fit, and had hurt other people in the process.
As Cara led Petral out of the med bay, Brit wanted nothing more than to leave the habitat ring and spend an hour training in the power armor down in the cargo section.
She looked at her hands, scarred from years of duty, her palms calloused and rough. There wasn’t any reason they couldn’t be a mother’s hands. She had to make the decision to be a mother again—even that was the wrong line of thinking. Cara was proving that she had never stopped being a mother, she had simply abdicated the role. Should she talk to Andy about any of this? He might be the only person she truly could talk to and she’d squandered that possibility. Fran seemed all right, really. Foul-mouthed. Sexy in a curvy, messy way that Andy had probably always preferred.
Brit shook her head, angry with herself for letting her thoughts go wild. She found the book where Cara had left it and flipped to a random page. Glancing at Tim, she started reading lines, hoping something might change.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
STELLAR DATE: 10.01.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Chorin Tree, Callisto Orbital Habitat (Cho)
REGION: Callisto, Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
Conceptually, Andy knew that the Cho’s population was greater than Mars. It wasn’t until they left the terminal maglev and arrived at the Avalon medical district that the sheer number of humans packed into the orbital’s three rings—with the fourth in progress—really sank in.
At least in this area, there were people everywhere. An attempt had been made to break up the collection of storefront clinics with trees and other greenery, along with benches and fountains, but there were so many people that all he could see were faces in every direction. Some people were obviously patients while others looked like worried family. A woman with uncovered mech legs walked past a vendor selling hot pastries, while kids squeezed between lines of people.
Being surrounded by so many normal people going about their lives made Andy acutely aware of how isolated he had been in the last two years. Not since he had been on High Terra, in the suburb of Raleigh where Brit’s mother lived, had he seen so many people simply living their lives. He wondered where they were all going, what they wanted, what they did for a living. A few people even smiled at him, which was unnerving. He couldn’t square the current state of his life, including Tim’s injury, against something as banal as normalcy.