All Fall Down

by Astrotomato

  “Do you know what this is?” Masjid held out his hand and showed her the covering over his index finger.

  “It's a dermal patch. Usually used to deliver an instant anaesthetic.” What was going on?

  Masjid raised the finger and put it to his throat.

  “Doctor Currie, what are you doing?”

  “I am tired, General Leland. Tired of lies. So I am going to tell you some truth. And then you are going to wipe my memory, so that I have no idea. It's better I don't know. Do you understand?”

  “Did you send the coded message?”

  He laughed bitterly, “No, I'm too weak to send such a thing. Peter did. My colleague, Doctor Cassel. You should know he's dead.”

  “Dead? How?”

  “Underneath this Colony in an uncharted tunnel is a secret facility. Inside are twenty three biological specimens.”

  “What? Specimens of what?”

  “Human DNA mixed with something... non-human.”

  “Animal?”

  “Alien.”

  “Impossible.” Kate felt the colour drain from her cheeks. First contact had been made? How was that possible?

  Masjid smiled weakly and put the dermal patch to his neck, “The Compound X in my bloodstream gives me some resistance to this, so I have a few seconds left. Bring your wrist pad to me.”

  Even in his weakened state he was astute. Kate admired him. She rose and stood near him. He tapped her wrist communicator, and spoke several access codes and passwords into it. He started saying a final password or code, Kate couldn't tell, but before he could finish he swayed and slumped into his chair.

  Kate looked at the immobile heap.

  “Verigua?”

  The molecule still floating in the air beside her disappeared, replaced by two eyes, cartoon-like, sketches of black defining them against the white, “This is turning out to be a most curious day.”

  Kate looked up, “I think I'm going to need some help.”

  “I heard what he said.”

  “Do you know anything about it?”

  “Nothing. Cross my heart.” Verigua moved Doctor Currie's body into the air and onto a holo operating table which materialised from the bright white ether. “By the way, I visited the corridor, deep in the Colony.”

  Kate pulled over a holo tool. She had to stop and practice deep breathing to steady her hand. She couldn't get the thought out of her head that there were human-alien hybrids below the Colony. So now she knew what Daoud was up to. The mission grew worse with each passing hour. She was starting to feel out of her depth. “And?”

  “There is a barrier which stops me passing. I am trying to break the programming on it.”

  “You know when I came here I thought this was going to be fairly easy.”

  “Ah, Kate,” Verigua swirled from the whiteness into a black cat, sitting at the end of the holo operating table, “you humans never make things easy.”

  “This isn't a Colony. It's a nest of vipers.” She readied some tools over Doctor Currie's head and paused to rub her eyes. “I'm so tired.”

  “I'm afraid I cannot help, except with safety features to stop you harming him permanently.”

  She looked up at the black cat, “Please. I need your help. I don't think I can manage this alone.”

  The silver ship gyroscoped across Fall's barren surface. In the rare night, the sky was a muddy violet, dust polluted. The ship's guiding lights strobed, bringing a harsh, spinning white light to the cracked ground. A meteor flashed from the heavens to the ground, creating a complicated colour flow across the horizon. Beneath the ship, seen in hologrammatic projection in the ship's hold, the ground crazed in an increasingly anxious web of fissures. The original Colony structure crept closer across the web, a brooding, pitted dune of sorrow.

  “These tunnels go everywhere. It can be hard knowing where they all are when your physical self is locked in one room.”

  Win turned from the ship's control panel and quickly looked at the AI avatar in the holo cube. It was a strange thing for Verigua to say, he thought. After all, there were sensors everywhere which the AI could access.

  Between Win and the avatar was a bright holo display, showing atmospheric conditions and readings from his sensor net. The avatar was difficult to see, but he could make out movement, a swinging motion, backwards and forwards. The avatar continued continued talking while Win analysed incoming data, “It's interesting visiting the old Colony. So different from the other structure. Not a good place for humans, the old Colony.” There was silence, broken by the squeak of a swing going backwards and forwards, “Have you been to Jonah's playground? Everyone likes that, you know, all those little hims chatting and gossiping and adventuring. There's a lot of playing in there, when no one's looking. Wonderful place. Oh, here, look. The ground below. You need to run a deep-ground radar scan. Use infrasound. There's a hidden cavity along here. You're not listening, are you? It's important.”

  Tapping a finger on the control panel, Win bit his lip, a cheek muscle twitching, “I heard you. I've initiated it. Sorry, Verigua, but I am analysing a lot of data. Have you seen this, there's air movement in the old Colony structure. Most probably due to the night, rapid cooling of the ground air, causing the warmer air below to rise. It means there's air pockets.”

  Beside him, a small girl wearing butterfly wings stood on tiptoes, craning to see the control panel. “I can do stuff with your readings that will help you.”

  “I think I'd like to see the underground tunnel network again, the map we looked at before.”

  Pulling a lollipop from a pocket, the girl walked back to the centre of the room, “OK. Look, I put a spinning top in the holo grid. It's cute, huh?” The girl avatar sucked on its lollipop, eyes wide. Its wings opened, closed. They were iridescent blue and flowed from her blue and white dress.

  Win ignored it, his attention caught in the search for patterns in the data around him. He pointed back into the holo, where a fault line flickered on the planet's surface, “What's that?”

  The girl knelt on the floor, its skirt pooling, “Swing by later, or send a probe? It's something interesting.”

  “Let's concentrate on the old Col...”

  “Oh. What? That's... that's not fair!” The girl's lower lip trembled. Its wings flapped, fluttered. Giant, over exaggerated tears filled her eyes. The lollipop dropped to the floor.

  “Verigua? Is this part of your program?” Win watched the girl cry. It refused to speak, giving only snuffles in answer to his questions.

  Eventually it looked up to Win, “What's happening, Commander? There's something wrong. Don't you like me any more?”

  Before Win could respond, a black panther dropped into the holo grid, its shoulders hunched, head down, green eyes blazing. The young girl looked around, back at Win, bit its lip. Its holo smeared into the air. A small butterfly flew in circles, was gone. Win glanced from the space where the girl had been, over to the panther, then back.

  “Commander, I apologise for my absence. Some trouble with your colleagues, I'm afraid. I assure you they are well. Who, may I ask, were you entertaining? I had some trouble getting back in here.”

  Win stepped backward, confused, “I was talking to you, Verigua. That holo was your avatar.”

  “Nothing to do with me, Sir. What were you talking about?”

  “Well, we were talking about the original Colony, the geological faults, some noisy sensory readings between the two Colony structures, just there over by the control panel.”

  “Mr. Win, the holo grid you've set up doesn't reach the control panel.”

  Win stared, “Then... Who was I talking to?”

  “There's a trace in the ship's AI. Let me talk with it, see if we can figure out what just happened. You get back to your sensors and sweeps and probings, Sir.”

  Win watched the panther pad to the edge of the holo grid, crouch and leap out. A ghostly suggestion of the ship's avatar flickered across the space; a green flash. Win felt disturbed, out of
place. Tales of ghosts rose in his mind, warning stories about rogue AIs and cracked Minds left to fester for years with no one to talk to. He returned to the control panel, and set a number of sensor scans running. After, he primed then launched the probes he'd used earlier in the day at the inselberg. They dropped from the ship's hull, one racing over the fault line in the direction of the main Colony, the other two hurtling to the broken dome of sand that covered the original Colony. Those two would find ways in, and map the shattered structure from the inside.

  While the probes rushed into the night, Win kept his hands in the small holopits at the control panel, manipulating data, readings. His mind wandered elsewhere. The girl avatar had stood next to him, up on tiptoes, trying to see what he was doing. Maybe the Compound X was still active in his brain, allowing the AI to project images there. The avatar had been curious, chatty, familiar. If it wasn't Verigua, or the ship's lower grade AI, then what was it?

  He thought about Hong-xian, who was about the same age as the avatar girl. He wondered what memento he could bring from Fall for his son. The planet had no life, and its visual environment was empty: dust devils against a cracked landscape. Win looked at the time: early evening, standard time. Hong-xian would be playing in the home compound. Win pictured his black hair cut sharply down his ears, hiding his small nose, his face turning round, smeared with mud, a toy automaton in his hand, surrounded by the bushes and ponds of Win's planetside home. He couldn't wait to get home. The whole team was tired, needed a break.

  A holicon unfolded on the control panel. He glanced at it, expecting to see a map scroll unfold, one of the probes reporting initial subterranean structures. Instead a dark cloud, elaborate in its fluffed curves, formed, sparking lightning. On his gaze, the cloud expanded, the planet's meteorological satellite displaying an oncoming storm.

  “Computer, weather analysis please. A storm is coming. Is this the planet's permanent storm system?”

  “Colony reports that this storm is the result of a drop in ambient temperature caused by temporary night conditions. The planet's permanent storm will return in thirty eight hours.”

  “Risk analysis please. Should we return to the Colony?”

  “Colony reports a category four storm. Non-essential flights must return within one standard hour. Shall I set a return course now? Travel time is thirteen minutes at standard surface speed.”

  “Let's wait thirty minutes. Recall the two probes at the old Colony in twenty minutes, and alert the third probe to dock with the ship en route.”

  Win sent his work from the control panel to the holo grid behind him. Would there be a sign of the alien yet? “Where are you hiding, little one?”

  He merged blizzards of incoming data from the old Colony with original structural maps. A jagged confusion emerged. There were explosions frozen in tortured walls, obliterated rooms and mangled piping. Entire floors of the old Colony had slid down, following the intrusion of the cruiser. Along the ship's flank was a condensed heap of metal, bioplastic, textiles and organic matter: no doubt the dead, pooling in long-desiccated accumulations of liquids, fats and festered flesh. Thank goodness he wasn't down there himself to smell the decay.

  The sensors recorded radar images, density maps, gravitational changes, chemical signatures, magnetic envelopes, everything as they passed through the underground tomb. There were a million pockets for something to hide in. In the twenty minutes that Win watched the underground movie unfold, he realised that searching for anything in that foetid mausoleum was almost useless. A killer, an illicit biological research programme. Whatever. It was all but pointless.

  As the probes approached the surface again, he instructed them to drop small sensors at the entrances. Devices smaller than ants, waiting, watching, listening, recording anything that might come their way.

  Verigua re-appeared in the holo grid as a glowing white orb, with luminescent tentacles, “It is time to return to the Colony, Win. There is a continuing risk of intrusion into this ship's Mind. I need to bring it back to the hangar to run diagnostics and to calm it. And your General has some news. Are your probes returned?”

  “They're docking now. You can move the ship. Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I can't. There are what you may call fingerprints in the ship's subconscious routines. They're not hidden. Something accessed the ship and used stored imagery and the ship's own avatar programmes to talk with you. It stepped out of the holo cube by signalling direct to your mind and the Compound X devices. But there is no incoming transmission or access code. Either our hacker is a human genius, or there is an unregistered Mind on Fall. Only an AI would be capable of hacking another Mind without leaving any trace of how it got in. I must say, and you'll pardon me I'm sure, no AI would ever be so crude as to leave evidence that they were here. We're far, far too clever for that. But no human, I think, would be clever enough to hack a Mind.”

  “So what do you think? Man or Mind?”

  “I think you should talk with your colleagues. Now, we're on our way. I will need to leave you to your work now, Commander Win. This was a most instructive journey.”

  As the ship approached the Colony's hangar entrance, the storm roared over the horizon. He looked at it through a window. Lightning flashed out of its dust and confusion, static discharges caused by friction between the sand and wind. His sensor net was sending anomalous readings as the storm moved over it. Ghost readings, scratchy, showing signs of movement in two places. He ran a diagnostic, just to be sure, but the sensors were reporting overload by lightning strikes and his diagnostics returned low confidence in the data.

  The ship sank below ground, and the hangar bay doors closed to the surface.

  The storm rolled over the Colony.

  Kate propped Masjid against the corridor wall, walked several metres behind him, then turned back. She watched him, waiting for him to stumble. He was conscious enough to stand, but not yet aware. The anaesthetic was slowly wearing off.

  She breathed slowly. The back of Masjid's head showed beneath his fine hair. His arm steadied him against the wall.

  Kate thought of Masjid's last words to her before he went under. Twenty three biological specimens hidden in the Colony. And derived from alien DNA. It couldn't be true.

  And he'd given her his access codes and voice patterns. These things were not given lightly. She knew he had given it as a key, but was it to unlock his files or a passage to the specimens? Or all of that? Doctor Currie would know that searches in any computer system would be traceable. And if this was a secret, then any access would be monitored. Would he put her in that position? No, she decided. It would give her away before she could stop... What?

  So that left the codes being used for a physical lock. A door. Excitement gripped Kate's body. She'd decoded the message. “Fall. Human hybrid. Murder. Not human DNA. Help.” Twenty three hidden alien-human hybrids beneath the Colony. She was overwhelmed. The mission had become ridiculously complicated at their last consequence map update. Now it was... If this got out, society would collapse. There was a great secret on Fall. Her excitement grew, and with it grew anxiety. Time was running out.

  Masjid started to wobble. Kate walked towards him, skipping the last few steps so she could catch him under his armpits.

  “Doctor. Are you OK?”

  Masjid looked around at the voice, his eyes rolling,“Mm?”

  “Are you OK, Doctor? You stumbled.”

  “I'm, er.” He pulled his head back, his eyes trying to maintain a constant focus, “You're the MI agent. Leila-something.”

  “General Leland, Doctor. You look pale. Let me help you to MedWing.”

  “What's going on?”

  “I just came out of that room and saw you stumble. Let's get you to MedWing, just to be on the safe side.” Kate took his arm and walked him to the nearest lift. Masjid tried to start a conversation, but trailed off after a few words, shaking his head as if annoyed by a buzzing fly.

  Kate took sidelong glances at M
asjid on the journey down to MedWing. He was a man harbouring a great many secrets. Medical advances that could regenerate an entire body. Drugs that allowed the brain to meld directly with an AI and a virtual environment. And twenty three captive human-alien hybrids. Life in the galaxy was going to be more complicated after this.

  What were the consequences of his research? That no one would now die?

  And what of these, she could hardly bring herself to think the word, these alien-human hybrids? Every line of thought she followed became crowded out by another and another. In the few minutes it took to get to MedWing, she came to the conclusion that no matter what the specifics were, two things had become inescapable: where there was alien DNA, there was an alien race. Whatever it was, wherever it was. And Fall had no ecosystem. So it meant the DNA had come from somewhere already known to someone.

  Fall had become a lens through which humanity had become smaller. After millennia of expansion, first across Old Earth, then across the Sol system, then through the stars, humanity had become the dominant species in the galaxy, growing large and powerful. Or so it thought. It had transformed planets, giving them atmospheres, biospheres, ecospheres. It was the biggest, most successful, most powerful species it knew. But with the twenty three, all that had now to wither, shrink, become uncertain.

  Humanity had assumed it had primacy in the galaxy.

  And humanity’s elevation was contained here on Fall. Doctor Currie's research meant the body could be re-grown, that Death's hand could be stayed. And what of the mind? If it could engage directly with an AI, would a pattern be left after engagement? Could the AI download a human mind into its cortex? Was humanity on the brink of god-like immortality, just as it was about to learn it was only a bit-part actor in a larger play? The collision of these thoughts left Kate with an uncomfortable feeling.

  “Well, here we are, Doctor.”

  “Thank you for helping me. I remember that I have something to organise. Is it for you?”