by Michael Kan
Arendi had wanted to avoid it — the replica and its scars just a reminder of her horrid past. The humanity that had been ingrained in her programming, how hard she had tried to strip it all away. To try and contain it, even destroy it, if need be. The flesh and the hair all pulled back, the machine that she wanted to be, bleeding through.
Those feelings had been so real, the anger almost uncontrollable. Even with the cold logic, it could do nothing to temper it. The need to just end it.
Remembering the raw emotions, Arendi took a step back.
It doesn’t matter, she told herself. Not anymore.
Calmly, she pressed the synthetic peel against her replica’s cheek, and sealed it with the solution. Although the coloring was slightly off, the substance was a close substitute for white skin.
Arendi readied the next batch, having already finished with much of the face. Hours ago, she had produced the ingredients from the fabrication equipment brought by the Au-O’sanah. The textures and fibers had meshed together to form replacement material, the patches of skin, human lip and strands of hair clean and new.
The body before her stood still, the android shut off, and the eyes closed. Taking the next piece, Arendi placed the skin under the machine’s left eye, filling out the rest of the face.
She stopped and stared at her former self. The body was nearly whole again, the old scars that had lingered for so long, just a memory.
Arendi was about to continue, when she heard the door open behind her. She turned and saw Julian at the entrance.
“Hey,” he said, only to find himself staring past her. He entered the room and walked closer, noticing the difference.
The android, although powered down, was starting to look almost identical to Arendi. The only contrast was in the replica’s long, but incomplete hair.
“Nice,” he said. “She seems much better now.”
Arendi nodded, placing the vial of solution back on the medical tray.
“Has it all been loaded?” she asked.
“We’ve transferred almost all the missiles and other technologies to the Au-O’sanah. We’ll be ready soon.”
As he spoke, Julian spotted the medical tray, and saw the collection of tools, along with the strands of synthesized hair. He then looked at Arendi, and noticed her placid gaze toward him.
“Listen, I understand if you want to stay,” he said. “This is your home. More work needs to be done here.”
Arendi saw him catching a glance of the medical tray, and then the replica behind her.
“No, no,” she said. “I’m coming with you.”
She stepped away, and began removing the gloves from her hands.
“Our missions are the same,” Arendi added. “I know I can help.”
“But what about Servetus?”
She looked away from him, and pressed the back of her neck.
“My actions, my behavior, perhaps they deviate from the protocols,” she said. “In a way, they always have.”
“But is it what you want?” he asked.
She pondered over the question. In her mind, cycled the thoughts, the emotions never far behind.
What do I want?
She could think back to the logic. The need to follow the set orders.
For so long, Servetus had done so, following the age-old directives of its long-dead master.
Even now, the ancient A.I. called to her. The command codes sent. The takeover protocols knocking at her mind.
How easy it would be to hate him. To despise Servetus and the dead woman she had been based on. The mixture of logic and emotion said so. That Arendi was a tool. An experiment. A project that could be tinkered with. Not a life at all, but expendable.
Arendi didn’t care for any of that.
She bore no ill-will to her creators. They had simply done their best to save humanity.
Now Arendi was doing the same.
“The choice is mine.” She then looked into his direction. “Yes, this is what I want.”
Julian smiled back.
“I hope Servetus understands.”
“I don’t know if he will. To him, it’s an error that he can’t explain. So I’ve made a backup and transferred a copy of my current state into his databanks,” she explained. “Maybe one day he will understand.”
Arendi walked over to her replica in the room, and saw the quiet face in her midst. Affectionately, she touched the android’s cheek, and brushed back the bangs of the machine’s black hair.
“We will return Arendi,” Julian said.
“I know. I have no doubt.”
Relieved, Julian eventually left the room, and headed back to the Au-O’sanah. But before he did so, he wished to convey one final sentiment.
“We’ll take off when you’re ready,” he had said. “Glad to have you back.”
As she continued with the final repair, Arendi remembered that statement and smiled. The feeling was mutual.
In the end, it was simple. Julian had meant something to her, and she did not want to leave him. Despite her past, and what her creator had wanted, Arendi could forsake it all. She needed to only look at him, and realize it: she was no longer alone.
***
“Ready?”
Arendi nodded, her upper body and legs fitted behind the suit of nano-machines.
“Yes,” she said, the contained Endervar particle activated at her wrist.
Julian then commenced with the detachment procedures, the Au-O’sanah pulling away from the Elion’s landing bridge.
The anti-gravity thrust charged, as the secondary engines came online, and emitted a growing blue light from the ship’s rear.
On the view screen, Julian took one last look at the Elion, the ancient vessel like a monolith against the black void.
“We’re clear Servetus,” he said through the comm-link. “Godspeed.”
Using the manual controls, Julian turned the Au-O’sanah on its axis, and toward the specified coordinates out from the gateway.
As the bio-ship approached the wall of energy, Arendi inputted the order into her suit, the amplifier at her wrist reacting. It generated a field of warped space into the direction ahead, opening a path like she had done once before.
The Au-O’sanah’s secondary engines blasted, pushing it forward through the passageway unharmed. Maintaining a slow but steady speed, the vessel came upon the open sky on the other end.
“I’m starting to read it,” Julian said, looking at the scans. “It’s the other ship, and it’s not far.”
The Au-O’sanah finally passed through the barrier, leaving the gateway and its hostile energies behind.
“I’m reading a lot of different signals,” Julian said, going down the long list of communication frequencies the sensors had picked up. “But the motion sensors show it. The ship, it’s on an intercept course.”
He didn’t need to pilot the bio-ship much further. Over the horizon, the structure appeared, and closed in on their position near the anomaly. It was slightly larger than the Au-O’sanah at over 300 meters in length, and designed with a curved hull that stretched back along three wings. Colored in a silver and white, it flew along using an out-of-date plasma propellant, the technology archaic by Alliance standards.
“Incoming hail,” Julian said. “It’s EarthForce.”
He opened the channel, the view screen beaming the scrambled image from the approaching vessel.
“Kzzssk..kssskk....Will...ksszzk....zzzk...designation...”
Julian shook his head, switching over to the manual interface with direct control over the Au-O’sanah’s communication systems.
“Looks like there’s still a lot of interference,” he said. “Let me try to improve the signal.”
He calibrated the controls, the image slightly becoming clearer. On the view screen was a man, gray-haired, but shrouded in static.
“Sszssk…ssskk...Will...this...zzzsk...your designation...”
The man’s deep voice and accent was starting to fade
in, as he continued to issue the same, but gargled statement.
Listening to the few intelligible words, Arendi left her position at the ship’s main controls and stepped closer to the view screen.
“We read you,” she said loudly at the image. “We’re here.”
Gradually, she could see more, the gray-haired man, accompanied by two other crew members, sitting at their stations, on what appeared to be the other ship’s bridge. Even the whistle of the static was starting to disappear.
“Zzsssw...wss...This is Commander Williams. Do you read?”
“Yes,” Arendi said, almost excitedly. “We read you.”
The commander, dressed in the signature red and black uniforms of EarthForce, smiled back.
“This is the surveyor ship the S.S.F. Hedy Lamarr. Please state your name and designation.”
Arendi turned toward Julian, elated, but not quite sure how to respond.
“This is the starship the Au-O’sanah,” she said. “We’re here on behalf of the S.S.F Elion.”
The commander blinked, jolted by the statement.
“The Elion. So it’s true,” he said. “It’s still there.”
The commander then leaned forward, and took in the scans from his own ship.
He rubbed the end of his chin, fully aware of the oddities.
“Your ship. We’ve never encountered anything like it. And there’s no designation matching that name,” the man on the other end said. “But more importantly, you somehow emerged from the breach.”
“Yes, we’ve penetrated the invader’s shield,” Arendi said. “In fact, we are not from Earth.”
“Are you serious?”
The crew members on board the other bridge turned to look back at their superior in surprise.
Arendi motioned to Julian to prepare the payload.
“We are about to launch a drone. It has all the data you need, along with the technology stored inside. It’s meant for Earth.”
From the Au-O’sanah’s belly, the drone was released, and headed to its destination over at the other vessel. Inside it was all the stored knowledge from the Elion, in addition to a sample of contained Endervar matter.
“I must apologize commander, but we cannot stay,” Arendi said. “We still have a mission to complete, and the temporal effect risks prolonging our stay here.
“Yes, the temporal effect. But that means... You really must not be from Earth then?”
Julian silently nodded, realizing that in a way, he was staring back at his ancestors.
“The data inside the probe will explain,” she said. “It has knowledge about the enemy, and also on the current state of the galaxy, and much more.”
Skeptical, the commander squinted, and rubbed the bottom of his bearded chin.
“I know it’s much to digest, but you have to trust us,” Arendi added. “We will return.”
“I understand,” the commander said. “But before you leave, I must ask.”
“Please.”
“The Elion. I assume its safe inside the breach. However, the crew, what is their status?”
Arendi paused. Although she knew the answer, she was unprepared for the question.
Brushing the back of her hair, she looked at Julian, who gave a careful nod.
“I’m sorry commander,” she said, turning back to the view screen. “Unfortunately, none survived.”
It was a grim outcome. And yet as she said it, Arendi came to see that it wasn’t totally true.
“But their sacrifice was not in vain,” she added. “We are proof of it.”
The commander closed his eyes.
“I see,” he said. “The Elion’s captain...I knew her.”
Giving a deep sigh, the man then expressed his condolences.
“She was the best of us. Yes... As you said, I’m sure she didn’t die in vain. ”
Chapter 58
She had submerged herself in the neon fluid, passing through the protective membrane at the ship’s core, in a hurried rush.
Her golden hair opened in the blue waters, as she stepped in and tried to swim toward the curled pillar in the center of the pool.
There was little elegance to it. In the first step, the specialist stumbled to the floor inside the vat of liquid, her balance clearly off.
Clumsily, she pulled herself up, and reached out to complete her mad dash. It was almost pure desperation, the daze still heavy across her worn ruby eyes.
Beating in sparkles of light, the Au-O’sanah cooed to the presence of the specialist’s hands. She hugged the coral shell that made up the ship’s brain, and placed her face next to the pillar’s ivory white hide.
It was an intimate and yet sad embrace. Like a worried mother comforting a scared child. Julian could only watch from afar, not sure what to do.
“Has she said anything to you?”
Arendi raised the question, as they stood at the other end of the ship’s central core, both concerned.
Over an hour ago, the Au-O’sanah had made the jump into hyperspace, leaving behind Earth and the Endervar shield. The act had lifted the specialist out of her almost comatose state, and back into reality.
So far, she had said nothing to Julian, and instead had largely ignored him, his mind vacant of her presence.
“No,” he replied. “Nothing at all.”
Alysdeon was muter than ever, the quiet shock having rattled the New Terran woman into a near frantic state. Julian recalled her shaking the moment she had awoken. Her hands, arms, and shoulders all trembling, as if a freezing cold had clenched her body.
The specialist still shook now, her fingers fidgeting against the coral shell of the ship’s brain.
Julian looked down at his own hand and wondered. The need to fold his fingers, and close his palm, had faded. That sense of weight over his thoughts gone.
His time with the visions, while intense, had only been relatively brief. And even then, he had tried to suppress them, or at least the trace of them, pushing out the recollections whenever he could.
He could not say the same for the specialist. She had been under the enemy’s influence for far longer, their time on Earth lasting for over five days, although in reality nearly two months had passed due to the temporal effect. Julian could only imagine what she and the ship had seen.
“The experience,” he said, looking at the specialist clumped on the floor. “It must have been traumatic.”
Arendi saw the muted pain as well.
“Can we help her?”
In her hand, she held the small monitoring device, the polished equipment ready to take another brain scan. Julian, however, shook his head.
“Maybe we just need to give her some time,” he said.
In his own hand, Julian held the implant, the thin piece of cybernetic fiber a focused link to the Au-O’sanah. He placed it next to his left temple, and hoped for a response. Nothing immediately came, but eventually he could hear it. If Julian wasn’t mistaken, it sounded like the sobs of a frightened child.
***
A day later, Julian entered the specialist’s personal quarters, and found it almost polluted with a pinkish smoke.
He coughed, the adulterated air hitting his face. To him, it was a mixture of burning herbs, coupled with the smell of synthesized cinnamon and unflattering perfume.
He waved away the haze around from his face, and traced it to a corner on the opposite side of the room. Sitting calmly at a circular table was Alysdeon, a long cigarette between her fingers.
She took another puff, the flush of fog gusting from her lips. Dressed in a flowing red robe, and with her golden hair still wet, the specialist looked as if she had just taken a bath.
Julian approached, and sat across from her at an empty chair.
“Is this the Spice?” he asked, pointing at the surrounding smoke. “I thought it was illegal.”
Crossing her legs, the specialist grinned in a nod.
She then tapped the cigarette over a tray on the table. The magenta ash was falling down into an ever growing pile, surrounded by a ring of used spice buds.
Julian watched, noticing that her golden hair was quite damp and still dripping.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
She looked away at him, and down at the floor.
“You weren’t the only one affected by it,” he replied. “I saw it too.”
To make his point, Julian placed his hand on the table, and opened his palm, only to then close it.
“Everything was collapsing. The universe being pulled back.”
He described it, thinking that Alysdeon had encountered a similar experience. The specialist listened quietly, and inhaled another puff from the cigarette.
The specialist then took the receding cigarette and crushed the burnt end against the ash tray.
Julian remembered the theory offered by Servetus. All of space and time merging, preparing to expand once more into a new reality. He shook his head.
“It still doesn’t make sense. Why us? Why target sentient life.”
Alysdeon shrugged.
Rising from her seat, she walked away from Julian and toward the window, where the glowing fabric of hyperspace lay.
She crossed her arms, and grabbed the side of her shoulders, recalling the intrusive sensation. Indeed, there had been visions, a myriad of them, all crashing up against her psyche. And yet, it had paled in comparison to the other feeling. That of the alien force, burrowing deeper into her thoughts.