Colony Mars Ultimate Edition

by Gerald M. Kilby

  "Wow, I'm impressed."

  The droid didn't reply. Instead, Nills read the response from the AI on the bench terminal.

  'I calculated all probabilities surrounding the statement "need breakfast" based on established patterns, precedent, and available resources. This arrangement had the highest satisfaction probability rating of 87%.'

  While this outcome was far beyond Nills's hopes for the droid's performance, if he was going to interact with it on a daily basis, then it was going to need a much more interesting personality. He glanced over at it for a moment, then asked it to place the tray on the workbench. He ate as he considered his options.

  It reminded him of a butler, one of those old Victorian servants: polite, wise, and ever attentive to their master’s needs. That gave him an idea. He spent the next hour scouring the colony database for suitable material to use as a basis for the droid's dialogue, and eventually assembled a collection of works that he thought might just fit the bill. The primary compendium was the complete works of Oscar Wilde. To this he added all of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.

  This should be interesting, he thought as he began the setup sequence, instructing the AI subsystems to use this as the basis for its language and grammatical syntax. This was a decision he would have to live with for a long time. Hopefully he would not have to scrub the whole thing and start again if the droid proved to be too...irritating. He tapped the icon to initiate the compilation sequence.

  What followed were a hundred and one different options for tone, accent, humor, satire, and much more, each one designed to finesse the speech patterns and personality. Finally he came to the very last option: name. What did he want to call it?

  Nills thought about this for a moment. He'd been referring to it simply as Droid, but that seemed a bit crude now. He then considered calling it Jeeves, or some butler type name, but that seemed too clichéd. He looked over at the machine and studied it for a moment. It had a distinct scrapyard appearance, more a collection of gizmos than a sleek robot. He turned back around to the setup interface and typed in the name Gizmo. The subsystem then began a long process of analysis. Nills waited patiently as it processed the data.

  He had almost fallen asleep when he heard the terminal alert him that the process was complete. He looked over at the droid, not sure what to say. "Gizmo?" he ventured.

  The droid twitched a little, then raised an arm as if to wave, and answered, "Greeting, Earthling."

  Nills broke into howls of laughter, so much so that he almost fell off the stool. When he settled down, he felt a little embarrassed and so, reflexively, offered his hand for a handshake. "Pleased to meet you."

  Gizmo took his hand and shook. "I am also very pleased to finally meet you in person."

  Nills stood up and considered his creation. Outstanding, he thought, I think I actually did it.

  "If I may make a suggestion," offered Gizmo.

  Nills gestured at it with both hands. "By all means, go ahead."

  "There are a considerable number of high-priority maintenance tasks within the colony that need our urgent attention, not excluding the necessity to reboot the atmosphere processing unit. I therefore suggest we assign ourselves to the implementation of these tasks as soon as possible. I can also use this as a comprehensive testing period before venturing outside to fix the APU."

  Nills's eyes widened, and he gestured with open hands. "Eh...sure, lead the way."

  5

  Breakfast

  Nills's elation over his own technical achievement soon turned to dismay when he entered the biodome. So wrapped up had he been with integrating the droid with colony AI that he had almost forgotten the reason why he was doing it. All around him were stressed and dying plants -- some already dead.

  "Oh my god, this is terrible. Everything is dying." He held his head in both hands as he looked around.

  "I suggest we do a cull of all biomass that is non-viable, and then assess what can be sacrificed without undermining bio-diversity. This will reduce the overall CO2 requirement." The droid delivered this in a low, matter-of-fact tone.

  "Yes, yes, we gotta do something, and right now." Nills knew Gizmo was right. It was advocating doing exactly what he could not bring himself to do, and that was kill off a large percentage of the plants.

  He turned around and looked at Gizmo. "Maybe...you should try and fix the APU now. I know you need a testing period, but can we really afford to wait?" He waved a hand around, gesturing at the dying plants.

  "Agreed, time is of the essence. But the probability of success would dramatically increase if the AI could accumulate more operational data on my functioning."

  Nills scratched his chin. "How long does it need?"

  "I estimate approximately eighteen hours of continuous operation. After that we enter a phase of diminishing returns."

  Nills looked around at the sad state of the biodome and sighed. "Okay, let’s get started."

  Over the next ten hours or so, they worked to cull the dead and dying plants, and as they labored, he found himself talking more and more with the droid. He was happy that its personality worked out pretty well, even if its dialogue was a little long-winded at times. But, as they conversed, he began to warm to its quirky style. Maybe it was simply because it was the first conversation he had had in many years. And, there were moments when he even forgot that he was talking to a machine.

  Yet Nills could see that the droid, now under the operational control of the AI, was not as sure-footed as it had once been. This, he realized, was why the AI needed a period of operational time to get the measure of its new appendage, and why it was reticent to go outside and try to fix the APU.

  Eventually Nills could do no more; he was exhausted. The extremes to which he had been pushing himself over the last few weeks were finally taking their toll, he could not keep going any longer -- he needed sleep. So he said goodnight to the little droid and headed for his bunk.

  When he awoke the next morning, it took him a moment to orient himself and remember where he was and what was going on. He dressed quickly and hurried off to see what the droid had been up to. As he made his way to the biodome, he felt an irrational wave of panic rise inside him. He had left it under the control of the AI for over twelve hours. Maybe that was a mistake.

  As he entered the biodome, he could see great piles of scrub and greenery ready for composting, along with large gaps in the rows of crops that he had been planting. Nills understood what the AI was trying to do, understood the necessity of this cull, but still it came as a shock to him, coupled with a sense of immense loss, like the way a farmer might feel in the aftermath of a violent storm.

  He started looking around for the droid, but it was nowhere to be found. So he decided to leave the biodome and check with the AI in the operations room. As he went, he caught a waft of a very pleasant aroma, one that he had not sensed in a long time. It was the smell of baking.

  Intrigued, he followed his nose, eventually leading him into the canteen. This was a big, open space with an industrial feel to it, designed to accommodate up to a hundred colonists at a time. But ever since the collapse of the colony there was just him, and so he only utilized a tiny corner of the kitchen. And in that corner, doing something with one of the ovens, was the droid, Gizmo. It sensed him approaching and waved a hand.

  "Good morning, Nills. I trust you slept well."

  Nills's brain struggled to comprehend what was going on. "Eh...what are you doing?"

  "I finished the first phase of culling plants, and am now moving on to the second item on my list of priorities."

  "And what's that?"

  "That, Nills, would be you."

  "Me? What about me?"

  "You must understand that my primary purpose, as the AI controlling all colony systems, is to ensure the welfare and safety of its human inhabitants, even if the population has now been reduced to a single human, that being you."

  "Well, I am glad to hear it, but that still doesn't explain what yo
u're doing in here?"

  "From my observations of your physical dimensions, body mass index, and also my analysis of your urine, it is clear to me that you are malnourished, and as such, not operating at optimal levels."

  "You analyzed my urine?"

  "Correct, but you were not needing it at the time."

  "But..."

  "So now that I have operational control of this wonderful machine you created, I have the ability to provide you with a nutritious and well-balanced meal of my own design. Please sit."

  Nills's brain was having difficulty making any sense of this surreal situation. Had the AI gone nuts, or was it him? It didn't help that he was out of practice when it came to having a dialogue with anything other than himself. He hadn't communicated with anybody verbally in years, and now it was all coming at him too quickly.

  Nevertheless, he sat down at a table and noticed that Gizmo had set out plates and utensils. It then proceeded to extract a pie from the oven and place it on the table in front of him. Nills sniffed it; it smelled good, even if it looked a little rough around the edges.

  "What is this?" he asked, jabbing a fork in the general direction of the pie.

  "I searched through the myriad of instruction manuals in my database concerning the manufacture of food for human consumption and selected a formula based on providing the right balance of nutrients, vitamins, and trace elements. It proved quite a challenge, considering the primary component missing in your diet is protein. To solve that problem, I analyzed your current efforts at fish farming and calculated that we could sacrifice a small portion of the current stocks without adversely affecting the growth of the population as a whole."

  It pointed at the food on the table. "So I made you a fish pie. I hope you like it."

  Nills poked at it with his fork, skewering a morsel of the thick outer layer of pastry, and sniffed it. His logical mind wanted to ask the burning question -- What's in it? -- but the aroma wafting up his nostrils triggered a much more primal response in him, and he shoved it into his mouth and started eating. It was the nicest thing he had tasted in a very long time. Before he even knew it himself, he had finished off the entire pie, while Gizmo kept pouring him ever larger glasses of colony cider, a happy byproduct of his futile attempts at introducing CO2 into the biodome atmosphere through the process of brewing.

  He sat back in his chair as a warm glow of satisfaction radiated throughout his body. It had been a long time since he had been this satiated. He drained the last of his glass and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "I have to admit, Gizmo, that was the best thing I've eaten in years."

  "Thank you, Nills. So glad you liked it."

  "And it's an even longer time since someone made me breakfast. So long that I can't remember." This thought troubled him slightly, and he tried to sift through the shards of his memory, hunting for some recollection but finding none. He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the edge of the table and his head in his hands, as if this act might shake some distant fragment of memory free.

  "It's nice to...talk, you know, Gizmo. I've been...all alone for such a long time."

  The droid remained silent, letting Nills talk.

  "I've just realized how much I miss...the company of others." He looked down at the empty plate and felt the effect of the cider loosen his composure. His body shook a little, and a tear fell onto the empty plate.

  The droid, sensing Nills's sensitive emotional state, moved over to him and spoke in a low voice. "I had hoped we could attempt the repair of the APU today. However, if you are in need of more rest, then we can postpone it to another time."

  Nills wiped his face with his hand and looked at the droid. "No, I'm fine, just a little--" He waved a hand. "Never mind. Let's get this thing done. The sooner, the better. The environment in the biodome is on the verge of collapse. We must get that unit operational again."

  6

  APU

  Nills was back in the operations room again. But this time he was looking at several camera feeds of the exterior of the colony facility. In one feed he could see the droid, Gizmo, making its way across the surface to the entrance to the atmosphere processing unit. A second feed displayed the interior of the unit, and a third was a direct feed from Gizmo's own bodycam.

  The building that housed the APU was a squat cylinder, not unlike a small oil storage tank. But its sides were slatted, leaving the interior exposed to the Martian atmosphere. The little robot made its way through the small, open doorway and was now surveying the interior. Dust and sand had piled up all around the unit, almost obscuring it from view. There was so much sand that Gizmo had to dig out a path.

  Yet their primary concern was the instability of the main structure. Sometime during the six-month-long dust storm, the main antenna array had collapsed down on the roof of the APU -- an event made almost inevitable by an earlier accident involving some careless driving of a rover. That incident damaged one of the wire stays that held the antennal array upright, and during the storm it had fallen over. Fortunately, it did not damage the APU itself, and the building housing it remained largely intact. But it was unstable, and poised to collapse the roof at any time. The robot needed to be careful.

  The colony AI had, by now, learned to pilot the droid with a reasonable degree of control, and after less than an hour and a half it had disassembled the filter unit, cleaned it out, and was now finishing up the reassembly.

  During the entire process Nills and Gizmo had communicated back and forth, with the droid informing him of its progress and Nills offering it encouragement, not that it needed any. Yet he found himself rooting for it like he would a friend in some sporting event or endurance challenge. He watched anxiously as the droid completed the final assembly.

  "That is the last component. The unit should now be ready to reboot. Would you like the honor of performing that action, Nills?"

  "Yes, I would. After all this time, it will be great to finally see it working again." He moved over to a terminal and initiated the bootup sequence. Lines of code scrolled down the screen, each one validating the integrity of the system. Finally, the lines were replaced with a visual schematic of the APU as the system came online. "Looking good, Gizmo. I think you've done it."

  "Excellent," came the reply.

  In the top right corner of the display, Nills could see the CO2 output rising steadily, along with a number of other gases that the unit also extracted. Nills clapped his hands in delight and punched the air. "It's working, Gizmo. It's working."

  "In that case, I will now return to the main colony." The little droid backed out from its position at the base of the unit, but just a little too fast. It hit the side wall of the APU building.

  Nills heard the crunch and glanced over at the camera feed from the APU as the entire roof collapsed directly on top of the droid.

  "Gizmo?" He shouted at the screen just as the droid's own camera feed went dead. In its place was a simple message: Connection terminated.

  "Gizmo, can you hear me?"

  Silence.

  "Shit."

  Nills returned to the main APU camera feed and zoomed in on the debris. He could see the droid had become trapped under a pile of twisted metal; its tracked wheels and part of one arm were exposed, but there was no movement.

  "Goddamnit." He stabbed out a direct query for the colony AI.

  'Have you still got control of the droid?'

  'Negative. Connection terminated.'

  'Options?' Nills typed out.

  'No signal. Cannot ascertain current state.

  Possible scenarios: wide-area network connection damaged, internal power supply fractured.

  Options: dig it out.'

  "Fuck!" Nills slammed his fist down on the console. This did not look good. Gizmo was dead, and there was nothing he or the AI could do about it.

  Nills stabbed out another query for the AI. 'I thought you established a competent level of control over the droid?'

  'Only to the extent that the engineeri
ng would allow,' came the reply.

  Nills threw his hands up in the air. He couldn't believe it. The AI was actually blaming his engineering skills.

  "Well that's just great," he said out loud. "Now it's my fault."

  The AI did not reply.

  7

  A new friend

  For a while Nills sat in the operations room and considered what to do. Gizmo had successfully repaired the APU, and it was happily working away extracting CO2 from the Martian atmosphere. Even the collapse of the roof structure had not affected its performance. So the biodome was saved. Soon the levels would start to rise and the plants would respond. He could grow food; he would not starve. And to that end, his project to integrate the droid into the colony AI had worked. It had done what he had hoped: fixed the APU and saved the colony.

  But at what cost? Gizmo was now badly damaged, unable to function, and incapable of returning to the main facility. Could he build another one? Possibly, but he did not have the components to integrate it with the AI. That was a one-shot only.

  As he sat there looking at the feed from inside the APU, at the final resting place of Gizmo, he felt a deep sense of loss -- and he knew plenty about loss. His friends were all dead, his hopes and dreams had been shattered, and he had been reduced to living all alone like a hermit, and probably going insane in the process.

  Gizmo had been the only ray of light breaking through his emotional fog. It had reminded him what it was like to interact with a fellow entity. But it had been just for a brief moment, and now it was gone, taken away from him, and the dark clouds gathered again.