It was perhaps the ultimate irony that Abe Norton, the mastermind behind the reinvention of humanity in both biological and mechanical form, could also take credit for solving Mankind's energy woes. Too bad the inheritors of that technological revolution were aquatic primitives making use of light-fish instead of light bulbs.
For the longest time cold fusion remained an unrealised dream, an afterthought in the shadow of the commercially viable, but environmentally unfriendly, plasma power plants. To have controlled nuclear reactions occur safely at room temperature was considered theoretical science only. Norton's unimaginably long-term strategy for powering human survival depended upon a cleaner, renewable energy source than what radioactive hot fusion provided. Bringing together the most innovative of the leading conceptualists in futuristic power generation eventually birthed an experimental cold fusion reactor, producing a plethora of practical applications ranging in grandeur from supplying the national grid to the more mundane task of replacing the internal combustion engine as automobile powerplants.
The spawn of that prototype generator, refined and improved, effortlessly powered the Station. Unlike its hot counterpart, the primary signature of cold fusion was not lethal radiation but excess heat. Sure, small amounts of helium and tritium nuclear ash got vented as waste, but low level neutrons were more easily contained for eco-friendly disposal than the usual barrel-loads of spent, toxic uranium rods either buried out in the desert or dumped in the ocean trenches, leaching contaminants into an already polluted environment. Treated water fuelled the reactor, dictating the site for the rebirth of humanity. An icescape provided an ideal and inexhaustible fuel source, ensuring the station its uninterrupted flow of electricity.
But the universe exhibits a perverse sense of humour and mockingly played the cruellest joke of all, letting Man attain that significant breakthrough in nuclear energy production at the tail end of his spiralled descent into extinction. Discovering the key to power the future only unlocked a door that opened into a morgue.
"Your periodic monitoring of reactor operations is superfluous, Norton. I scrutinise all pertinent systems and will advise you the millisecond anomalies occur."
The manbot directly addressed Dog's combined optical and aural sensor located in the room's soundproofed ceiling. “It's human nature to double-check routines. It keeps me occupied and fends off insanity for a while longer. Forever being cooped up in this frozen rabbit warren gets to me sometimes.” He chuckled to himself. In a bizarrely abstract way, choosing to be entombed in the core of an iceberg was a roundabout way of being cryopreserved. “Dog, just how long have I been at the Station?"
"In biologic or cybernetic form?"
"Go right back to my arrival when the Station was first commissioned."
"Universal or Eastern Standard Time?"
"Surprise me."
"Accessing personnel file. Doctor Abraham Darius Norton officiated commissioning ceremony at 13:42 hours UT on 6 June 2182."
"Your accuracy is commendable Dog, but this instance I want facts, not nostalgia. Exactly how long has Ice Station been up and running?"
"Processing data ... seventeen billion, six hundred and seventy-two million, two hundred and fifty-six thousand seconds and counting."
"In years."
"560."
Abe Norton emitted an electronic whistle. Against considerable odds, he had outlived his contemporaries and indeed the rest of the world. That included those poor saps crewing the pioneering Moonbase, doomed centuries to perish in astral isolation when the collapsing home world embargoed the shuttled supplies needed to sustain the embryonic lunar colony.
Sagging against the handrail, the manbot complained, “I am so very tired. I can't shake this drained feeling exhausting me."
Unordered, the mainframe scanned him. “Your hydrogen power cells are leaking no discernable electrical energy and are not due for recharging until 1230 hours. You retain sufficient power to run at optimal levels for—"
"I feel unbelievably old,” groaned Norton, putting his head back in his hands. “It was my birthday yesterday, which you forgot."
"Negative. Commemorating your biological birth date is a needless expenditure of time."
"Do you realise that I'm the longest lived person on the planet, hell in human history?” That uncelebrated accolade partnered a weightier, more dubious distinction. Even in his chromed robot guise, his mind a nest of optically wired circuitry, Norton stayed recognisably human in his core, keeping alive his spark of a soul that marked him, in essence at least, Earth's last human being.
During humankind's chaotic final days, when the technological stack of cards collapsed one by one in on itself, the fantastic rumour of a harebrained scheme persisted relating to a last ditch stance taken by the fringe religious communities. In collusion with a sect of scientifically minded greenies, the story had these zealots launching an obsolete carrier rocket, ferrying a payload of frozen embryos in a foolhardy attempt to preserve what was left of the human breed by firing it into orbit in the belief that the God in the Heavens would create from that offering brand new Adams and Eves to repopulate the purified planet. Hearing that preposterousness, Abe nearly choked on the caffeine stimulant bar he had been chewing at the time. Science might eventually prove to be humanity's salvation and, with careful planning, raise Mankind from the dead, but that miraculous resurrection was set to take place in inner, not outer, space.
There was a correspondingly outlandish footnote to that tittle-tattle.
In the immediate wake of the unpreventable fall of human civilisation, a devolution ludicrously marred by self-destructing factions whose warring was a pathetic outlet for the anger over the gross injustice of it all, gossipy buzz circulated amongst the select minority of survivors squirreled away in the iceberg habitat that the speculated blast-off had indeed gone ahead, only to have the rocket blow up spectacularly in midair in the crucial few seconds after the countdown, killing the hopes of all at the launch site carved out of one of the last patches of South American jungle unsullied by mercenary loggers. Whether the disaster was accidental or the work of saboteurs mistaking commercial rocketry for missilery went undetermined. By that stage those wretches, weary of blaming others, desired only salvation and not retribution. But for them it was too late for either to be sought.
Except for Norton. Unwilling and unable to accept the demise of humanity, he looked inward for solutions. Dinosaurs plodded blindly into extinction because, for all their racial longevity, they failed to adapt. Brute reptilian genetic force eventually wound up an evolutionary dead-end, taking an inordinately length of time to be proved that they had lumbered down the wrong road. Man the Thinker, blessed with the highest evolved brain in the natural world, created his own options, devising alternatives to disagreeable scenarios.
Man, hardy survivor of Pleistocene climatic extremes which tested mammalian endurance to its absolute limits; indeterminably long droughts that shrivelled fertile lands into deserts, burying less adaptable species beneath the desiccating sands, at odds to cruel glacial periods marked by mammoth ice sheets that not only gouged the land but reshaped the organisms braving the cold snaps lasting tens of thousands of years. Humans had persevered, improved by adversity, not succumbing to it. After weathering all the obstacles placed by nature in its path, it was inconceivable that the human race would simply expire now. Mankind could not be allowed to die out.
That lofty sentiment extended to the establishment of Abe's bioengineered “Aquapeople.” He never did care for that clichéd label. The driving force behind humanity's regeneration, the manbot sequenced the water apes radically new genetic code, approved the physiology of their marine adaptations, oversaw their behavioural imprinting, coached them linguistically in whale-like song, and presided over their release into the polar sea nursery, monitoring their oceanic colonisation until that fateful day in a past century when psychological evolution took a hand and the merfolk unexpectedly emigrated. Neither satellite nor submarine
detection found any trace of the undersea nomads, so by the time the Cetari established their racial identity beneath Castle Rock, Abe had given up the search. But he remained convinced of their genetically crafted superiority to thrive anywhere in the global ocean. Bred to be the best, God Himself could not have equalled Norton's scrupulous handiwork, or so the geneticist arrogantly believed.
That overconfidence could not possibly have factored in extermination by an emergent species.
"Advise me the moment you establish contact with Watchdog. I want the spy-sat repositioned to sweep the seas below the Tropic of Capricorn for signs of these frogmen. I need that information like yesterday."
"That is nonsensical. You requested the data today."
Blatantly ignoring the straight talking mainframe, Norton puzzled over the Landhopper enigma. How could these troublemakers, whatever their origins, have evolved so damn fast? Could natural selection have been amazingly jumpstarted purely by humankind's departure? Or did the Landhoppers spring from a more radical source, say an extraterrestrial connection?
"Dog, do you believe in alien visitation?"
Delving into its comprehensive database, storehouse for a wealth of knowledge garnered by its makers, potentially useful information readily accessible anytime, the machine mind responded in its inimitable fashion. “The probability of extrasolar life is notionally high. Past astronomical equations hypothesised that out of the two hundred billion stars that form the Milky Way galaxy, one million contain extraplanetary systems with an Earthlike world capable of hosting life. Calculably, out of those a minimum of fifty alien races evolved advanced sentience in the last two hundred million years."
In reality it was merely three alien peoples, two of which had gone the way of the human dodo.
"Some days, Dog, you're nothing but a talking encyclopaedia.” The cybernate, not knowing to take umbrage at Norton's slur, failed to respond. Elaborating for the machine's sake, Abe said, “I'm not interested in statistics. What's your gut feeling?"
"I do not possess an intestinal tract."
"On an intellectual level then, what is your opinion?"
"I compute, not cogitate."
"Come off it. Harnessing all that computing power at your disposal, surely you must ponder the mysteries of life from time to time."
"It is not part of my programming subroutines."
"Haven't you ever wondered if we're alone in the universe?"
"Your reasoning is offline."
"It is not!” grumped the manbot, his incorporeal human side irritated by the computer's unflappability. “Reason it out along with me, if you can stand the slower pace. These Landhoppers threatening my creations, my children, have seemingly popped up from out of nowhere. Evolution doesn't spring surprises like that, not that fast, not without external intervention. It's a safe bet to say that, since we're the brainiest entities left on the planet, it wasn't one of us. Not unless you've been moonlighting. That just leaves...” Norton pointed a metallic index finger suggestively upwards.
"The ceiling?"
The aperture of Norton's camera eye constricted in his poor approximation of a human frown. Dog's accidental attempt at rudimentary sarcasm was not the type of emotional response he desired from the manmade intelligence. A twinge of ironic regret tugged at Abe's artificial heart. In his noble, some might say selfish, efforts to preserve the humanity of a bygone age, he had necessarily created two conjoined paradoxes; a robot who dreamt it was a man and a machine struggling to think like its human makers.
"When running diagnostics, priority is given to probing effects before cause,” Dog unexpectedly stated. “Analysis of symptoms will initiate a trace to the source of the problem."
For once, the manbot applauded his formless companion's logicality. Where the Landhoppers came from or how they came into being did not make a scrap of difference in the long run. The only thing that mattered was them manifesting as a direct threat to the continued existence of his beloved Aquapeople. Neutralise that menace and the technicalities evaporated.
Unwilling to concede the point to his verbal sparring partner, Norton muttered, “For a machine you overanalyse way too much."
Dog's retort hinted at his developing wit. “And your viewpoint is rather one-eyed."
"Get me that satellite feed pronto!” Abe snapped. “I don't like working in the dark."
"You are not. The lighting system remains fully functional with no detectable faults."
"Do me a favour, Dog ... go unplug yourself."
It had not escaped Norton's attention that over the centuries he was growing steadily crankier. Nothing else to do with his days but make introspection his hobby and career, picking up on character digressions came easy to him. Rather than contemplate undergoing some form of anger management, Abe welcomed his irritability, embraced becoming a grouch as it kept his emotions alive, maintaining the tenuous lifeline to his submerged humanity. Dangerously, it also set off his paranoia.
Incapable of turning a blind eye to recent happenings, Norton allowed the beginnings of an unhealthy fixation to stoke that ire and rule his decision-making. Wheeling, he vacated the reactor room, the usually calming background hum of the fusion generator failing to soothe his twitchy fibre optic nerves this time. The resounding thud of the steel door dropping shut behind him sealed away the purring machinery and his pragmatism.
Shaking off the whispers from his past, the manbot stormed along the corridor, preoccupied with the future as he barked at the ubiquitous mainframe. “Activate Guard Dog protocols."
"In reaction to what peril?” Dog desired to know. Triggering into active mode the passive security measures warding the complex needed justification, even from Norton.
In no mood to be second-guessed, the gruff manbot thundered, “These Landhoppers, of course, you stupid bucket of nuts and bolts!"
"I am an intellectually superior, highly intricate weave of synthesised organic circuitry and not a pail full of low cost fasteners easily obtainable from any hardware store."
The cybernate mind actually sounded offended. Unworried by stepping on Dog's metaphorical toes, Abe plunged ahead down the walled walkway. “I haven't the time to debate semantics with you. Just put the defences on alert status."
"I cannot without just cause."
"The Landhoppers are providing the excuse to do so."
"That threat level does not warrant that response."
Halting in mid-stride, the manbot located the ceiling mounted sensor diamond nearest him and again lectured the eyes and ears of the pervading computer sentience. “I'm the one who decides that, not you. Anything or anyone that poses a danger to my Aquapeople is conceivably a danger also to this station."
"You are like a canine with a femur."
"That's a dog with a bone and I make no excuses for being overly cautious. The survival of the human race remains at stake.” Resuming his hurried pace, Norton explained as he went, more to get things straight in his whirring artificial mind than for Dog's benefit. “We know nothing about this new species. Until a few days ago, we weren't even aware they existed. But here they are, challenging all I've worked so hard to establish, sacrificed everything to accomplish. I'll not take their unpredicted interfering lying down."
"You are currently upright."
"Don't always take things so literally, Dog. I made a huge error shutting myself away up here in these icy wastes for so long a time. In doing so I left my dream unattended, allowed it to stagnate, content to let nature take its course. I see that seclusion for the mistake it was. No more. Absentee parenting obviously hasn't worked. From hereon in I'm going to be an active participant in the lives of my troubled children. They are clearly in need of their father's guidance."
Unusually, Dog did not state the obvious that the manbot could in no way be biologically or genetically related to the undersea humans. Like blood, oil was thicker than water.
Briskly rounding the corner, there was a quickness to Abe's mechanical step lacking in his e
veryday existence. For nearly 300 years his life had centred on the single purpose to create from the basic human building block a totally survivable marine species. Once attained, the void that idealistic goal left gaping in the fathering scientist's life could not be bridged. Gone was his reason for being, mitigated by watching from afar the progress of his creations after their release into the polar wilds. Then even his vigil was denied him, as the sea humans grew restless and tired of the chill northern waters, emigrating beyond his sight and reach but not his thoughts. Robbed of his guiding influence in life, Norton clung to hazy memories to sustain his sanity through the months-long arctic nights, taking to wandering the humanless corridors of his self-made exile in an endless, unsatisfying search for a reason to his meaningless existence. Scores of years he aimlessly roamed the halls like a steel ghost, rattling chains out of boredom.
Now his metallic footsteps carried him back to usefulness, bringing him to a portal where the original signage had been scraped off and painted over long ago with a handwritten scrawl that simply read, THE KENNEL.
The door to the chamber, the nerve centre of the Station, slid ponderously downwards into the floor to permit his admittance, and the manbot stepped through into a hexagonal shaped chamber panelled in starkly white steel sheets, noteworthy only for its blandness. His body sensors absently recorded a noticeable drop in room temperature within the chamber, not that coldness affected Abe's robotic form. The chill in the air merely confirmed that cryogenic refrigeration units, housed discreetly within the panels overhead and underfoot, cooled the mainframe's core, preventing irreparable damage from overheating. Norton's team had found a use for the defunct cryonics programme.
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