Deja Vu

by Guerin Zand

  I was bored. This was what my life had come to. It wasn’t very exciting, and to me, it just seemed like I had accidentally fallen into another job. It had been a while since I actually killed any alien bad guys. Even on our last visit to Desterio, I didn’t even get off a shot. I just sort of supervised and tried not to get shot myself. Now, the Rangers were all happy. Any chance to actually use their weapons seemed to cheer them up. Most of our previous engagements, we had simply used the immobilization fields to disable the enemy. The troops all thought that was sort of cheating.

  When Steve and the reinforcements arrived, they decided to change their plans. First off, most of the troops were pissed that Kelly and our squad of Rangers had pretty much had all the fun. Instead of setting up a base outside of the colony they decided to land the cargo ship with the main body of troops at the far end of the spaceport. We sent down a warning for the Trogans and everyone else to stay clear of that area. Kelly and our squad had done such a good job putting down the resistance, nobody on the surface ignored the warning. They quickly set up defenses around their ship. With the assistance of the Ryvius and Discovery, the Rangers used site-to-site portals to deploy squads strategically around the spaceport, and to deal with any resistance that might pop up. Kelly recalled our squad back to the Ryvius so we could prepare to leave. Steve said he had it from there. I was glad to turn it over to him.

  It was time to get rid of Heesa. I went and escorted him from his quarters to the transport room while Kelly put the Ryvius in orbit around Trogan. I opened a portal back to Heesa’s compound in the capital city of Baghandist. I gestured towards the shimmering trace of the portal entrance and said, “You can leave now, Heesa.”

  “How do I know that portal will take me somewhere safe?”

  I pulled my 45 out of its holster and pointed it at the moron. “You don’t, and honestly, I’m not in the mood to waste any more of my time trying to convince you. It’s bad enough you got me involved in all of your bullshit. I should be running around the universe chasing space babes and checking out the local burger joints, but no. I’m here, bored out of my fucking mind, and having to deal with you. So, I’ll make this simple. You can walk through that portal and hope you come out the other side alive and safe, or I’ll simply put two in your head and toss your dead body through. I’m going with whatever option takes the least effort on my part, so take your pick.”

  Heesa started towards the portal. He paused and turned to look back at me. He said, “This isn’t over Mr. Zand. We’ll meet—”

  I cocked the hammer back on my 45. Heesa stopped talking and walked through the portal. Fucking aliens! I ordered Kelly to take us back to Hell and I went up to the lounge to get an early start on happy hour.

  Chapter 13

  Family Matters

  As soon as we arrived back on Hell, I made a beeline to the exit ramp. Kelly started to ask me some questions about something or other. I just told her to take care of it, she was in charge. As soon as I entered the main facility, I found Sabrina there and it looked like she had been waiting for me to return. I walked past her and tried to act like I hadn’t seen her, but I was right. She had been waiting there for me.

  “Guerin?”

  “Yes, Sabrina. What is it now?”

  “We were wondering if we could have a talk with you.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “I guess we don’t really have a name for ourselves now that you ask. That’s sort of what we want to talk to you about.”

  “You want me to come up with a name for you ladies? Not a problem. I’ll work on that as soon as I get some spare time.” I turned and started to walk off, but Sabrina stopped me by rather forcefully grabbing my arm. I gave her a look that made it obvious I wasn’t very happy with being bot-handled like that.

  “Sorry,” she said as she released my arm. “But we’d appreciate it if you could make the time to talk to us now, if you can.”

  Her voice almost seemed to have an apologetic tone to it which was unusual for the fembots. Like I said, their personalities were still a work in progress. “Sure, lead the way.”

  Sabrina took me to one of the small dining rooms off the main mess hall. We were using these as conference rooms for the time being. I entered to find the entire gaggle of fembots seated around a table waiting for my arrival. Although they were fembots, they looked as real as any other women I knew. Something about ten of them and one of me made me a bit apprehensive.

  “So, what’s this all about?” I asked.

  Sabrina walked over to the head of the table and spoke. “Are we real?”

  Oh, great! They were looking to me to explain reality to them, the fembot edition. I really needed a lot more to drink if we were going to have this conversation, but no one had thought to at least bring a bottle with them. I figured I’d try to avoid the whole subject, just like I had done with my daughters when it came to having that talk with them about the birds and the bees.

  “I’m real, the table here is real, and you’re real. Are we done?”

  “That’s not what we’re asking. Keith said I wasn’t real, and we never thought about it before. None of us know the answer. We don’t even know what to call ourselves. We’re not human, or any other form of known life, so are we alive or not?”

  “Technically speaking, your physical bodies don’t actually meet all the defined characteristics that we normally use to determine if something is alive. That being said, if we used a more liberal interpretation of those characteristics, you could be considered to be living beings. You have to realize that we humans have never encountered anything like you before, so our definitions may not be the most accurate. You should probably ask one of the more advanced races like the Bree.”

  I could tell they really didn’t like that answer so Mia asked, “Don’t all living creatures evolve though?”

  “Again, the concept of evolution could be argued in such a way that it would include you.”

  “We were built though. We didn’t evolve into what we are, so we are not alive, right?”

  “Not necessarily, Mia. If you consider that the universe had to evolve to a level where your creation would be possible, is that any different than the case for human existence? Aren’t you just the result of an evolving universe and thus the result of evolution?”

  “But we’re programmed to serve you, Guerin. We don’t have free will like you do. We can’t do whatever we want.”

  “Is that really true, Mary Ann? Didn’t you ignore my instructions to keep Gamma safe and instead you let her go down to Desterio with her sister? If you actually had no choice, you would never have let that happen, but you did. Besides, humans are programmed as well. Just about everything we do is programmed into us. Most of the choices we make are based on that programming. Our coding is in our DNA, but it’s still coding, right?”

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think I was being played by the ladies. It’s not like that’s never happened to me before, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when Sabrina said, “We want to do more. I enjoyed, I guess that’s how I feel about it, working with Keith and the crew of Discovery. We all want to be assigned to your teams, so we can experience what they do. We don’t want to be stuck on this planet now that we know there is more.”

  That’s right. It was a fembot revolution. It always happened in every story I ever read about fembots, and it was happening here as well. “And if I say no, are you going to kill us all and take our starships?”

  Sabrina would have looked confused if she knew how to look confused. That was the problem interacting with the girls. They had no sense of humor or imagination, and for the most part they were expressionless. “No. We do not wish to harm you. Our programming would not allow that.”

  “But if your programming is not fixed, that could change, right? And are you saying you would harm us if your programming would allow it?” Now that had them all confused, and I really wasn’t expecting an answer. “The problem is we don’t know
enough about you. For instance, how would you react if your crew was attacked? Would you be able to defend them? Would you want to? How do we know you won’t go all HAL 9000 on us?

  You can’t program the right response for all situations. Humans rely on each other’s judgment, their sense of right versus wrong. Our teams are trained, and they go through a selection process where we decide if that person has the qualities we want in our team members. We could train you to be part of our teams, but it would be impossible to determine if you possessed the qualities we want.”

  “So, your answer is no?”

  “I didn’t say that, Sabrina. Just right now, I don’t think we can treat you as equals when we assign you to a team for a mission. You have proven yourselves useful to our efforts so far, and it would be a waste not to be able to take advantage of your skills. First, we need to set up a training program to teach you how we work together. Until you understand that, you would simply be assigned as assistants with limited responsibilities. If at some point you prove to us you are capable of more, then we can reassess your roles at that time.”

  “So, I can continue to work with Keith and the crew of the Discovery?”

  “Is there something going on between you and Keith that you’d like to share with the resto of us, Sabrina?”

  “No.”

  “It sounds like it to me.” I gave Sabrina a sly little smile, but it was really wasted on her. “Whatever. I’ll make sure to add a lesson on the birds and the bees to your training. Forming friendships with your crew is a good thing, for the most part. It appears that Mary Ann has formed some sort of bond with my daughter Gamma, so I am going to assign her to Gamma for now. Sabrina, you’ll be assigned to Steve, since he is the captain of the Discovery. He’ll decide your duties for the time being.”

  “What about the rest of us?” Ginger asked.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, ladies. You have to understand that you represent a level of technology that is beyond anything any human currently understands, and possibly beyond the current understanding of the Collective. There are many factions out in the universe that would like to get their hands on you so they could dissect you and unlock the secrets of that technology. We can’t allow that to happen. So, for now, I want to limit the number of you assigned to off-planet roles. Alright?”

  The women did not raise any objections, but then again, they never really did. This whole discussion was the first time I saw any sort of dissent from the fembots.

  “Right now, we really need most of you to help train our people who will be working on this planet. You understand the systems, and we don’t. This will give you the opportunity to work with people and develop your social skills. It is going to take time for all of us to learn how to work together and to figure this all out.”

  “Thank you, Guerin. When can we get started with our training?” It was my favorite fembot, Julie-bot, that asked that question.

  That gave me an idea. Since the day I first met the ladies, Julie-bot seemed to be the senior member of the group. I may have picked on her a bit more than the rest, but who could blame me. She looked just like the real Julie, and giving her orders for some reason made me feel good. “I’m going to leave your training up to you, Julie-bot. In fact, I am going to assign you to be Roger’s assistant. Work with him on putting together a basic training program and then you can implement it for him. You will be his liaison to the...” Ok, I guess we really did need to come up with a name for them. “Do any of you have a suggestion for what we should call you ladies?”

  “Shouldn’t we be named after our planet or system of origin?”

  I wasn’t sure what the actual name of the planet was. It had one of those stupid Bree designations which is why I nicknamed it Hell. Pretty much everyone else followed my lead on that. That wasn’t to say there weren’t more than a few people who objected to that name. There was an ongoing discussion to change the name, but I have to say, Hellions did have a ring to it though. The system’s star was named Vaj, and I think everyone would agree, Vajinas was probably not a good choice. I was going to punt this one.

  “I’ve nicknamed the planet Hell, sort of as a joke, but perhaps you ladies should name your homeworld, and then derive your race name from that? I believe that is how a lot of the other races in the universe have been named.”

  ◆◆◆

  I left the ladies to work out a new name for the planet and finally got back to what I had originally planned, drinking more. Unfortunately, as I poured my first drink in my quarters, my family decided to join me. Since I wasn’t sure when I’d get to my next drink, I decided to make it a double.

  “Still mad at me, Dad?”

  “Would it do me any good if I was, Maria?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m not.” I took a drink and smiled. Really, what was the point of being angry. “How did the Deviant perform on your little trip?” We had only done a few tests with the ship before Maria took it to Milly’s station. Just like every other bit of technology we use in life, you don’t find those little things that bother you until you put it to use in real situations.

  “It performed fine, although it is a little cramped. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to make a few design changes before we start producing any more ships in the Deviant class.”

  This was obviously Maria trying to play nice with me. I’d given her a hard time when she changed the design of the Ryvius to include her little princess suite.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Like I said, it’s a little cramped. I’d like to make the bridge a little roomier. I know it’s just supposed to be a cockpit for the pilot and copilot, but we kept bumping into each other as we moved around. If we are only going to use these ships for simple transport, and not long-term missions, perhaps we could reduce the number of crew quarters from four down to two? That would give us enough extra room to make it a bit more comfortable, and we could increase the amount of cargo we could haul with it as well.”

  “What if for some reason the crew would need to stay onboard for an extended period? I understand that these ships would normally just be used as quick transport, but they could also be useful as reconnaissance vessels as well.”

  “In that case, the quarters are large enough to house two crew members if needed. A simple reconfiguration of the cabins could be done to include two beds in each of the crew quarters. They could also hot bunk, since it is most likely you’d be working in shifts in that situation.”

  “That sounds reasonable. Why don’t you make the changes to the design. We can review them with Roger before we send the plans off to Julie.”

  “I’ve already done that. Roger was ok with the changes, so I sent the new designs to Julie. I just thought I’d check with you in case you had a problem with it.” Maria looked at me like she was waiting for me to start an argument about that. I didn’t, and she looked a little disappointed that I hadn’t taken the bait.

  “Anything else, Maria?”

  “No. Where did you go after you landed?” Maria stepped behind the bar and fixed herself a drink.

  “Oh, the girls wanted to talk to me. It seems they want to…I’m not sure what to call it, spread their wings I guess?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They want to go on more missions. Get out and see the universe or whatever.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “What could I say, Maria? I agreed, but I told them that they would need to prove themselves before we fully trusted them. Sabrina seemed to be the leader of the revolt. I think she has some sort of fembot thing for Keith. Don’t ask me to explain it. Perhaps Prima could have a talk with the girls about the birds and the bees.” I looked over at Prima who was sitting on the futon in the living area.

  “Sure, I could do that for you, Guerin, but didn’t you teach them all about that when you were here alone with them?”

  “No, I didn’t, Prima. What sort of space perv do you all think I am?”

>   “Really, Dad? Do you seriously want us to answer that? What about your baths with your lady friends?”

  “What? It was kind of nice to have them help with the bath, I won’t lie, but how is that any different than the mechanical back massager you have in your suite, Maria?”

  Maria had picked up that massager on Trinix. It was like a pad that morphed into three pairs of hands to give one of the best back massages I’d ever had. Maria spent a lot of time with her back massager alone in her suite, so she figured it was probably best to drop the subject. I just smiled and went over to the futon and squeezed in between Gamma and Prima.

  “So, did you have any fun at the station, Gamma?”

  “Yes. They had this giant wildlife module where we could walk among all these different animals. According to Milly, they were all from a planet that no longer supports life. The people who work there go around to many worlds collecting different animals. They have several different modules like that on Milly’s and the other Bree stations. It was really seismic.” Seismic was a Collective slang term that pretty much meant cool, but in a bigger way. At least that’s how Gamma explained it to me.

  Prima reached over for my free hand, the one without a drink, and held it in hers. “She wants to move to the station, Guerin. I was thinking I would go stay with her for a while if you are ok with it.”

  “Please, Papa? I can live in the wildlife module with the teams and go to school there. Alpha can stay there with me too, and there is all sorts of room for her to run around. Can I? Pretty please?”

  “How long were you planning on staying there with her, Prima?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe six months or a little longer. No longer than a year at most.”

  “So, you’re going to leave me all alone, and you’re even going to take my dog? Who am I going to play with then?” Having already raised one daughter, I knew that if I didn’t object at least a little, Gamma might not find the idea of going to school on the station as appealing.