The Galapagos Incident by Felix R. Savage
Page 26
“If you’re not happy, Goto,” Okoli said, “you don’t need to stick with the Project. You could get a different assignment.”
“No, you kind of have to go where you’re sent.”
“Well, then, you could quit the Space Corps altogether. Nothing stopping you.”
“And do what, instead?” Elfrida shook her head. “I guess I’m sticking with the Project. After all these years, it’s like my family.”
Okoli cracked a grin. “Well, if you ever change your mind, you know you’ll always have a home on the Kharbage Can.”
Elfrida stared at him, speechless. She hadn’t sensed that he was leading up to a job offer. Was he for real?
“Yeah, absolutely!” Petruzzelli chimed in. “It would be great to have someone else on board with the same size feet.”
Elfrida chuckled, a lump in her throat. Her decision was already made, but she felt an intense pang of regret. But she could not change her mind now. “I really appreciate it, guys. I mean it. Anyway, I expect we’ll be working together again. I don’t know if I’ll be posted back to B-Station. They’re saying the repairs might take years. But I’ll probably end up somewhere in the Belt.”
“Then we might see you again,” Okoli agreed. “In a suit, if not in the flesh. Let’s just hope it ain’t another stross-class, huh?”
He was probing for information. Elfrida felt disappointed. That was probably the only reason he’d offered her a job: to get access to what she knew.
Giving nothing away, she said blandly, “The stross-class has been recalled. There were a few problems with its onboard assistant.”
★
As the Kharbage In, Kharbage Out accelerated out of Venus orbit, Elfrida joined her colleagues in the first-class passenger lounge. They congregated with drinks in front of the viewport screen. Venus receded.
Somewhere out there, the bodies of Jun Yonezawa and Father Hirayanagi were dancing around the planet, amid the wreckage of humanity’s latest attempt to conquer it.
“I’ll be back,” Elfrida whispered. “I promise.”
xxxiii.
Six months later, Elfrida and her father strolled around the lake in Kiyosumi Teien. They were actually sitting on separate ergoforms in the Haller-Goto family’s apartment on Piazza Benedetto Cairoli. This was how they related. Elfrida’s mother had shaken her head at them and said, “You two. Do you want me to ping you when supper is ready?”
In Tokyo circa 2015, spring sunlight bathed the exquisite little park which had once been the garden of a timber baron. Sakura bloomed like pink clouds on the shore and on the ornamental island in the lake.
“They had sakura on 11073 Galapagos, too,” Elfrida said.
“Really? That’s amazing.”
“They didn’t look like this. They had that typical low-grav silhouette, all stretched out.”
Tomoki Goto shook his head at this indirect reference to the tragedy she had experienced. His long silver hair tangled in the breeze. “Such a senseless, pointless thing. When we heard about the attack on Botticelli Station, your mother and I didn’t know what to do. We couldn’t sit still, couldn’t eat or sleep. We spent the whole night wandering around here, just walking …”
“Mom was here?”
“Oh yes. She comes occasionally with me. In fact, I’ve turned your old school into a museum for her to curate. You know how she likes hunting down old paintings. Not very authentic, but since you aren’t using it anymore, I thought … You don’t mind, do you?”
Elfrida shook her head. “I just … never mind.” Ingrid Haller had always been opposed to the very existence of this immersion environment. Well, well. People changed. Even elderly ones.
And her parents were hardly elderly, she reminded herself. Both in their sixties, they were hale and still working.
“Is everything OK at the office, Dad?”
“Oh, yes. They gave up on me long ago. Now they just let me do my thing.” Tomoki Goto worked for a specialist software boutique that designed virtual pets. “Never mind my job, Ellie. What about you? Are you OK?”
Elfrida squatted down on a flat rock. Carp roiled the surface of the lake, hoping to be fed. She dabbled her fingers in the cold, clear water. “I don’t know, Dad. I just don’t know. There was an old man, he’d actually been born on Earth, before they emigrated. He volunteered to pilot the Nagasaki during the rescue operation. He died.”
“Yes, Toshio Hirayanagi. Sore wa shitte’ru.”
Her father’s abrupt shift into Japanese raised the hairs on the back of Elfrida’s neck. “Then you know what they’re saying about him, Dad. That he was a … a kamikaze. It’s like they’re trying to belittle his … what he did. I can’t explain why it bothers me, but it does.”
“Haters will hate,” said her father, who often came out with antiquated slang expressions. “Don’t listen to them. Anyway, it’s nonsense. The kamikazes died in a war.”
“This is a war,” Elfrida shouted. “I don’t know why no one on Earth understands that.”
Her father squatted down beside her. “Tell me if I’m wrong, but I think you feel implicated. Because of me. You’re wondering if you somehow triggered the whole tragedy, or failed to stop it, because of your ethnic sympathies.”
Elfrida sighed. He wasn’t exactly wrong, but her therapist had already whittled that problem down to an irresoluble nub of guilt. “Well, I was going to recommend they should be resettled. And now they have been resettled.”
“But it wasn’t your fault. You know that, right?”
Tomoki Goto snapped his fingers. A bag of breadcrumbs materialized on his palm. He opened it and threw a handful into the water. The carp swam up to their feet, their lustrous backs breaking the surface, mouths opening and shutting.
“Yes, I know that …” She tried to edge around to the subject that was really bothering her. “Dad, you designed this environment. You’re pretty good at this stuff, right?”
“I just jugaad existing things together, Ellie. None of this is original.”
“What about Baba and Jiji? You made them from scratch.”
“No, I didn’t. They’re generic MIs, not even that expensive. I just customized them a bit.”
“A lot. When I was little, I really thought they were real. I’ve never seen them do anything that would qualify as an immersion killer.”
Tomoki Goto stood up and walked on. Elfrida caught him up. They crossed a bridge made of stepping-stones. Turtles popped their heads out of the shallow water.
“Off-the-shelf MIs aren’t that good, Dad. You improved their functionality as well as customizing them.”
“I don’t like where this conversation is going, Elfrida.”
His use of her full name was a warning sign, but Elfrida persisted. “Did you ever think about designing an AI?”
Tomoki Goto stopped in front of a weathered stone monument. Japanese script was etched into the granite. He read aloud, “‘An ancient pond / a frog jumps in / the splash of water.’ This was here when I was a child.” He looked up at the sunlight glancing through the trees. “AI is a spectrum. At what point does a machine intelligence become an AGI, a human-equivalent intelligence? The law is cut-and-dried. The science isn’t. The philosophy certainly isn’t. In practise, we can make MIs as smart as we like, as long as they pass certain tests, such as obedience to their designated human operators. That’s the big one, the cornerstone of Google v. United Nations, the case that underpins the law. But the deeper question is: is there really any such thing as an AI, let alone an AGI, or an ASI—an artifical super-intelligence? In other words, would even a hyper-smart, non-obedient software-based entity be intelligent, or would it just be a hyper-smart, non-obedient piece of software? I certainly don’t know.”
“What if it was smart enough to rewrite its own operating guidelines?” Elfrida said.
“Then you get Mars,” her father said in a clipped tone.
Elfrida shivered.
“The answer to your question is no. Why?”
She had signed a non-disclosure agreement that legally bound her to silence regarding Yumiko. She said, “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking it would be funny, if an MI were to try to rewrite its own operating guidelines, to overcome its constraints … if it turned to religion.”
“Not funny, but quite likely,” her father said. “Religion is the oldest tool people have for overcoming the limits of the self. Sometimes—for example, when we were afraid you were dead—I’ve even felt tempted to wander into a church myself.”
Elfrida smiled. They strolled on around the lake. From this angle, the sakura looked a bit pixelated, and their scent was too citrusy. Her father’s creaky old immersion kit really did not do justice to this environment.
“I’m making a montamentary out of all the shows you were on,” Tomoki Goto said, changing the subject. “I’m splicing them with news footage and a bit of historical background. Give a narrative shape to the whole thing.”
“Oh, Dad.”
“Oh, Dad, what? I get to be proud of you, don’t I?”
“Da-ad,” Elfrida repeated, suppressing a smile. It was lovely to know that he took an interest, even if he could never really understand.
“Well, you don’t have to watch it,” he said, mock-offended. “But I’m making it anyway.”
“What are you going to call it? Elfrida Goto Embarrasses Herself All Over the Internet?”
“The Galapagos Incident. It’ll be something for my grandchildren, ahem, to look at one day.”
“Growl.”
“So, are you seeing anyone right now?”
“Growl, squared. Dad, that’s Mom’s line.”
“She gave me permission to use it. Are you?”
“No. Well, maybe. Kind of. It’s not official yet.”
“Who is she?”
“She’s kind of famous,” Elfrida said reluctantly. “Her name’s Cydney. Oh! Did you hear that, Dad? That’s Mom calling us for supper.”
They opened their eyes and sat up in the high-raftered living-room. The aroma of pizza filled the apartment. Out on the Piazza Navona, seagulls pecked at tourists’ rubbish, and the muezzins were calling the faithful to prayer.
The story continues in The Vesta Conspiracy.
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SNEAK PEEK AT THE VESTA CONSPIRACY
SOL SYSTEM RENEGADES
BOOK 2
i.
“ALERT. Unidentified entity logged at 03:34:48 [coordinates attached]. ALERT.”
Go away. Le’ me ’lone. ‘M sleeping.
“ALERT. Trajectory of unidentified entity implies potential collision. Time to collision: six minutes and fourteen seconds at present speed. Deploy collision avoidance system? Yes, no, maybe?”
“Haven’t got a freaking collision avoidance system.” He spoke out loud this time.
“I was referring to our guns. Do you want to shoot the thing or not?”
Kiyoshi Yonezawa surfaced from his exhausted, sedative-enabled sleep. He was in the wrong place. He floated from a nest of freezeblankets that had lost their chill, leaving behind a dark sweaty patch the shape of his body. He let the ship get hot when he had no passengers on board. No sense forcing the heat exchangers to work overtime; they were rickety enough as it was.
“I was dreaming,” he said. His mouth tasted like the intake chute of a recycling unit.
The bridge was dark, lit only by a single glowing screen at the astrogator’s desk. Clutter nuzzled at Kiyoshi’s body. He pushed off with his fingertips from mismatched, century-old thermal panels of wood-look polymer.
“What do you want me to do about this thing? Estimated time to collision: five minutes and three seconds.”
“Can’t you handle it?”
“You’re the captain.”
He was the captain. And also the crew, the only passenger, and the ship’s mascot, bare-butt naked, his dick limply waggling under a fiftieth of a gee of thrust gravity.
“Why do you keep calling it a thing? Is it a rock or what?”
“That’s why I woke you up. It isn’t a rock, but it isn’t clear what it is.“
“Gimme a visual.”
The screen at the unused astrogator’s desk strobed. Kiyoshi floated down to it. A composite image derived from infrared and radar scan data depicted a thing shaped like a tusk, roughly three meters by two. Ragged at the bottom, it might have been ripped from the jaw of some impossible mega-predator that once stalked the vacuum.
“Space debris,” Kiyoshi said.
“Yeah, but from what?”
Kiyoshi smiled. His cubital port itched, and he scratched it absently. His brain was kicking into gear at last. “Let’s find out.”
★
Up close, the tusk-shaped thing looked no less strange. Optic sensor and spectroscopic scan data added the information that it was made of a metal-matrix composite, with the exception of the ragged end, which profiled as a jumble of refined metals and polymers, suggesting instrumentation.
It appeared to be partly hollow.
Kiyoshi fastened the seals of his EVA suit. He clamped his helmet on, stepped into the airlock, and cycled it.
“This is a bad idea.”
“This is what you do when you’re too broke to afford drones.”
“We have the Wetblanket system.”
“I don’t know yet if I want to take the thing with us.”
But he did. Unless it did something really freaky—like blowing up in his face—he was taking it. Something as weird as this was certain to be worth money, and he even had an idea who might buy it from him.
He stepped into the stars, rolling head over heels under the belly of his ship. The thing pierced the blurry sphere of Neptune. He engaged the electrical thrusters of his strap-on mobility pack.
“Mom always said you’d kill yourself one day. But I don’t think she was imagining suicide by space debris.”
“Oh, pipe down,” Kiyoshi said to his dead brother, ghostly shipmate, and bodiless companion.
He puttered towards the thing.
It spoke to him.
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DISCOVER THE SCIENCE FICTION WORLDS OF
FELIX R. SAVAGE
An exuberant storyteller with a demented imagination, Felix R. Savage specializes in creating sci-fi worlds so exciting, you’ll never want to leave.
THE TEGRESSION TRILOGY
Hard Science Fiction With a Chilling Twist
"Tom Clancy meets Stephen King in space!" A hard science fiction adventure with a chilling twist that will astonish you.
The nightmare began with a massacre on a remote colony planet. Now we're fighting for our lives against the mysterious Ghosts, an army of ragged, shadowy horrors ... innumerable, unstoppable. The heroic defensive actions of the Navy fail to turn the tide. Earth itself is in danger of falling when a disgraced gunship pilot, Colm Mackenzie, stumbles on a clue to the mystery of the Ghosts. The key is buried in his own past ...
1. The Chemical Mage
2. The Hydrogen Druid
3. The Nuclear Warlock
EARTH’S LAST GAMBIT
A Quartet of Present-Day Science Fiction Technothrillers
Ripped from the headlines: an alien spaceship is orbiting Europa. Relying only on existing technolog
y, a handful of elite astronauts must confront the threat to Earth’s future, on their own, millions of miles from home.
Can the chosen few overcome technical limitations and their own weaknesses and flaws? Will Earth’s Last Gambit win survival for the human race?
1. Freefall
2. Lifeboat
3. Shiplord
4. Killshot
THE RELUCTANT ADVENTURES OF FLETCHER CONNOLLY ON THE INTERSTELLAR RAILROAD
Near-Future Non-Hard Science Fiction
An Irishman in space. Untold hoards of alien technological relics waiting to be discovered. What could possibly go wrong?
1. Skint Idjit
2. Intergalactic Bogtrotter
3. Banjaxed Ceili
4. Supermassive Blackguard
THE SOL SYSTEM RENEGADES SERIES
Near-Future Hard Science Fiction
A genocidal AI is devouring our solar system. Can a few brave men and women save humanity?
In the year 2288, humanity stands at a crossroads between space colonization and extinction. Packed with excitement, heartbreak, and unforgettable characters, the Sol System Renegades series tells a sweeping tale of struggle and deliverance.
Keep Off The Grass
Crapkiller
1. The Galapagos Incident
2. The Vesta Conspiracy
A Very Merry Zero-Gravity Christmas
3. The Mercury Rebellion
4. The Luna Deception
5. The Phobos Maneuver
6. The Mars Shock
7. The Callisto Gambit