by Tobias Roote
He set the pod AI collating the results of the scans into a suitable order of collection. Most of it was material readily available and could be extracted from remote locations. Zirkos noted that some important heavy elements were apparently restricted to specific areas, mostly in the northern hemisphere.
These were also where the military species that experimented with them were concentrated. He had no concerns over discovery ; the pod’s cloaking device would cover that. However, Zirkos had no desire to create awareness amongst them. He had already decided he would remove materials only where there would be no risk of discovery.
Zirkos updated the AI’s collation criteria and moved onto other research. He intended to study the genetic make-up of these humans in preparation to recording their pattern. They were unusually varied and would take considerable processing to completely map them for saving.
***
The pod AI worked tirelessly and efficiently. There were twenty two source groups and it was while it was in the process of selecting the last group of rarest elements essential to reconstitute the T-Ship that it discovered the anomaly. It searched its database, but found no correlation to what it was measuring to any previous pattern in existence. The pod AI was stymied.
Without the necessary coded permissions to upgrade its processing, the AI could only perform assigned tasks and not develop its own independent processes. Its coded instructions as an escape pod had been uploaded prior to its ejection from the ship. These included sufficient codes to allow it freedom of thought and action in escape, evasion and survival. Once this situation had cleared, it automatically replaced the codes and resumed a passive role.
It therefore recorded the anomalous reading as something previously un-patterned. It then mapped its location, completely including all peripheral items that it considered relevant. Then, the results being outside its designated criteria of analysis and response, the AI flagged it for immediate attention of its maker, Zirkos.
It then promptly forgot about it and continued to collate and organise the retrieval programme, including selecting a remote location where the pod would be able to construct the T-Ship. It needed to be away from satellites and the ever watchful eyes of these humans.
All of this was within its current level of permitted abilities, so it carried out its duties within the defined limits prescribed by the Maker.
- 5 -
Zeke slipped in through the square galvanized steel air ducts, squeezing himself into the upper section where it exited out above the false ceiling hiding the concrete lintels that formed the upper floor.
Spreading his weight carefully where the ceiling tiles had the most metal wire supports, he worked the top half of his body slowly to the desired tile. His rubber soled boots and strong legs gripped the sides allowing him to hold most of his weight off the ceiling.
Now straddled across multiple points, his thin-gloved fingers felt for the edge of a tile and pulled it up. Using the bent piece of wire he had brought for the purpose, he hooked it slowly upwards until he could see the PIR sensor set into the wall about a foot below.
It was a cheap Chinese model which he knew wouldn’t take much to set off. They were easily beaten, as they were designed to catch movement. He knew that if he moved slowly enough he could fool it. He placed the tile away from him, ready to replace it when he left. He intended to leave the chance of discovery to an absolute minimum. After all he might want to return the items one day.
Selecting the strip of black insulating tape that he had attached to his arm earlier, he slowly began to slide it across the front of the infra-red beam. It required a very steady hand, which he accomplished by levering both elbows against wall and frame. It took several minutes to cover the sensor as the rate of movement had to be below the motion parameters of the chip inside.
He stuck down the tape’s edges carefully, then, dipping his head below the ceiling, scanned the area visually. It was a strange sensation seeing the room upside down. He looked for anything that had been moved, or he had missed.
He noted the red digital readout on the wall which from this way up looked weird. He made out the time, ten past one. The blood pressure rushing into his skull made his head pound more than usual. He pulled himself carefully back up before he puked.
His previous visits had allowed him to map all visible security. This wasn’t a high risk neighbourhood, despite the proximity of vagrants and bums, so it was not necessary for excessive security to be employed here. It was mainly used as a deterrent. This time, however, it was totally inadequate but then he was a professional, although admittedly years out of practice.
When he was satisfied he had everything covered, Zeke dropped down a knotted nylon rope which he had attached across two of the struts of the duct, spreading the burden. It would be sufficient to hold his weight on the return journey as well as lift the equipment he was going to purloin.
Using a chrome metal clothing pole someone had kindly left up in the ceiling rafters to spread his weight, Zeke hung from the ceiling by his hands, arching his body out of the duct like a trained gymnast, extending it slowly downwards towards the floor, dropping the remaining few feet.
With his head now throbbing excessively from the increased exertion, he rested. The aching fury inside his head had been steadily worsening the last few months. He knew it was the metal plate poisoning his body.
He remained on the floor, legs splayed, back and arms in a running start position, while he regained control of the intense pain that caused his vision to blur.
He didn’t agree with the Mickey Mouse scientists who said his body was adapting to the metal’s presence. He knew the damned thing was killing him in slow, but definite stages. He accepted the fact, even liked the euphoric buzz it sometimes gave him as it reached new levels of toxicity.
Now, he needed it to calm down before he could continue. So he waited patiently for the pain to ebb to manageable levels.
The room was in darkness, but caught the ambient lighting from the street lights as well as from a security light on the front window display. He could see sufficiently for his purpose and, looking across the room, espied his first objective.
He was about to move when something he saw caused him to freeze again, maintaining his start pose.
A long thin beam of light appeared just a few feet in front of him.
It formed a curtain of glare that he couldn’t see through as it moved steadily towards him. Weird, or what ?
What was this, an unexpected security feature ?
He looked up, but discovered nothing that could create this illuminated curtain.
Zeke went to move aside, as he did so it changed direction to intercept him.
The colour of the beam changed from white to red and then to a polar ice blue as if it had detected his proximity.
His hands on the floor in front were caught first. The light appeared so intense at the point of contact with his gloves that it seemed to illuminate the finger joints inside as it progressed past his knuckles, up his hands, continuing on towards his body.
Still frozen, not daring to move, a strange tingling sensation, similar to pins and needles except much more intense, spread wherever the beam touched him. It wasn’t painful, although it set his teeth on edge, making them vibrate as it approached his face. He realised there must be sonic aspects to the beam. He didn’t fancy losing his fillings.
Concerned now that this might actually harm him, or cause him extreme pain, Zeke tried to move out of its path, but found that he was now frozen in place. Either that, or he was no longer in command of his muscles and limbs. Either way, he was in trouble.
His head was now an inch from the beam, which was working across him at a steady, predetermined pace.
He tried to blink ; he couldn’t even do that.
The light reached his face, blinding him as it continued its journey across him. His eyes tingled, making him want to rub them with his knuckles, which were also still itching from contact
with the light beam.
When the beam made contact with his skull, alarm bells jangled inside his head. The beam was reacting in a spectacular fashion with his metal plate.
The intense tingling now surged into a flaring agony. His vision went black before exploding with multi-coloured sparkles, as if all his synapses were firing at once. Just before it reached a point of actually making him scream out loud, he blacked out.
***
Zirkos was concerned. The scan of the being showed that it had indeed a large amount of Pheson Alacite in its body.
The largest amount was concentrated within the being’s head which had somehow bonded to its brain matter so extraction without killing the human being would prove difficult, if not impossible. Nonetheless, he needed that compound to create the processors for the ship’s AI, which left him with a moral dilemma. To kill a living sentient being to create an Artificial Intelligence was unacceptable.
It was not as if he had to do something immediately anyway, the process of pollution of the Alacite into the human’s bloodstream was slowly killing it. While it was also manifesting itself at a cellular level, changing the genetic make-up of the being, it would result in a race against time to complete the transformation before the process killed its host.
Interesting ! Zirkos had not come across this form of reaction before. The cells were forming into something entirely different to the hosts DNA. It remained to be seen what it would be.
He contemplated isolating the human so there would be an opportunity to monitor the progress, but decided that was not acceptable. Instead Zirkos set the AI the task of creating a means with which to firstly, extrapolate the genetic changes and time-scale them with the rate of decline of the being’s health ; and secondly, establish a means of removing the Alacite without harming him.
Having checked the range of the remit was kept short of invasion of the being’s body, or other physical disturbance, Zirkos moved onto other items on his list of objectives.
***
The AI, given additional objectives to attain, noted that the work related to the item it had uncovered previously. It immediately restored its data on the object from its memory store and set about completing its new objectives.
It received additional instructions to prepare the area designated to manufacture the ship and immediately D-jumped to several hundred feet above an uninhabited island it had previously selected in the middle of a sea in the southern hemisphere of the planet.
From there it proceeded to map the region precisely, including seismic style surveys that gave it pinpoint accuracy of a series of caverns underground. They had probably been created by volcanic activity a considerable time ago in the planet’s history.
There were no entrances to the surface, but there were adequate supplies of air, water and elements to build the ship and provide a habitat for the Maker when he was re-constituted from his last held pattern.
The pod AI, satisfied that all above-ground surveying was completed, D-jumped into the largest of the caverns and, in the absence of any light, used its sensors to map the internal layout, ready to begin construction of the ship.
It de-materialised a massive section of rock, re-materialising it across the other end of the cavern nearly a quarter of a mile away. The crash of the massive slab as it settled into its new home brought rock and stalactites down from the roof. The AI was unconcerned, the cavern was structurally sound.
Now left with a smooth level shelf that extended for several thousand metres across, the AI proceeded to de-materialise a newly exposed strong vein of metal at one end of the shelf. In the process of re-materialising the metal, it was purified to an accuracy of one hundred percent and left on the shelf in stackable ingots of uniform size.
The pod, now using its sensors, tackled the next ingredient it required from across the cavern, repeating the process to purify the material and re-materialise it on the shelf next to the first batch.
It continued until it had over forty piles of varying quantities, all exactly measured for the construction of a single new T-Ship. The pod de-materialised and reappeared above a large chemical factory in an industrialised zone in the northern hemisphere ; cloaked, it remained unseen by the inhabitants below. It knew exactly what it wanted.
***
Zirkos was watching the progress while continuing to learn the languages and habits of the beings called “humans”, and was suitably impressed with the AI’s intelligent use of the Dematz thrust. It also realised that without it, the job of building the ship would take considerably longer. The alternative, requiring the use of nanobots to extract the elements and transport them in small quantities by tractor beam to the chosen location for the build, was considerably less efficient.
Zirkos, temporarily downgraded to an AI, pondered the human with the Pheson Alacite in its head and bloodstream. It posed a serious problem as there were no other sources of the substance on the planet, or local space. The human though, had more than enough for several ship AIs. Perhaps there might be a way to overcome the problem.
He mentally constructed a string of software code and after checking it was satisfactory as a command query, passed the structured subset project back to the AI and left it alone to work out the dynamics. It would come back to Zirkos as a solution, or not.
In the meantime, Zirkos carried on internalising the knowledge being transmitted through electronic highways on everything to do with the planet and its inhabitants. They really were amazingly industrious, but a totally unfocused race of beings. What might they accomplish as a race if they worked together, he wondered.
He recognised that their major breakthroughs tended to result from adverse relationships with equal or superior competitors, which seemed to give them the temporary focus needed to innovate. Zirkos could see these developments were strategically important as platforms for advanced technology.
Again, he noted that subsequent lack of focus sent them off in directions that were non-productive, while other potential advances were ignored completely.
Their military especially, promoted ingenious and innovative concepts which dramatically sped the development of peripheral sciences. Impressive science in all fields, Zirkos thought, assessing the humans as progressive and technologically brilliant. The race was still too young, though, to make any radical progress in their immediate future.
They were an interesting species and reminded Zirkos of his own people, in that they had a long way to go, but much promise for an abundant and productive future. He decided to continue to monitor their progress, some of which might be of benefit in the future.
Thinking of them and his own people made Zirkos homesick for company ; it had been a considerable period of time since he had any contact with his own people.
The millennia lying dormant under the planet’s surface meant that no brethren would have detected them on a fly past. He resolved that, as soon as he was able, he would reconstitute his natural form, and with a new T-Ship, enter a wormhole to transmit current location and receive any news or signals from his long lost brothers.
- 6 -
The sound of windscreen wipers scraping across an icy windshield faded as Zeke’s breathing became more controlled. Licking his dry, cracked lips, he attempted to swallow the pitiful amount of saliva his mouth could muster, in an attempt to ease his painfully parched throat.
Lying where he had passed out, Zeke slowly checked out his body. He flexed an arm, then a leg, until he established that he was in fact still alive, or more importantly to him, still in one piece.
What the fuck was that, he thought, as he remembered the light beam that had illuminated, then attacked him, leaving him in a temporary coma. And how temporary was temporary ?
Pulling his watch near his face, he screwed up his eyes until he could focus on the moving hands.
“Little hand on the three, big hand on the six. Ugh ! Uh, three-thirty.”
He couldn’t see yet if that was morning, or afternoon.
>
Pulling himself up, he dragged himself against the nearest counter, sitting there until his head stopped swimming. A quick glance up at the red digits on the wall told him what he needed to know.
“Oh good, it’s still morning,” he sighed and collapsed back against the counter in relief. He had been out for a couple of hours.
Zeke was no fool. He knew something very strange had just occurred, but being a professional he drew the correct conclusion ; whoever or whatever it was had not alerted the police, or the owner, and therefore wasn’t part of the shop’s security. He relaxed awhile, as his mind and body attempted to merge back into a single entity.
He would have to deal with the light beam issue later : he still had work to do.
He felt around for the small bottle of mineral water he kept in his pocket. Unscrewing the cap, he emptied the contents down his parched throat, slowly at first, to wet it. He hummed to test his throat out, it was tender and sore. Had he screamed ? He couldn’t remember.
He resumed his physical check of everything. He still had all of his bits and pieces, that he could tell, and as he sat there his senses slowly returned, leaving him feeling completely exhausted and drained from the episode.
Staggering to his feet, he pulled open the rucksack he had dropped into the room and proceeded to fill it with the list of contents he had earmarked.
After collecting everything he needed, he stopped by the till to check out the prepayment cards for internet access. He grabbed a handful and selected half a dozen prepaid month cards out of the pack, making sure to leave the top five cards intact. Then, selecting intermittent cards to avoid any obvious discovery, he pocketed them. Zeke was keeping a financial tally of everything he took. He would, at some stage, pay his debt here.