by M. D. Cooper
“No, really.”
“You don’t like heroin grapes?”
“I’m not a philosopher but that whole idea sounds like the death of what humanity currently is.”
“Violent, cruel, brutish with rare moments of genius and kindness?”
“You’re more of a pessimist than I am.”
“It’s none of those things,” Harl said from behind them. “It’s the most basic answer of all. You conquer.”
“But who?” Andy asked. “What government? What group? You can’t just conquer Sol.”
Fugia let the terminal float between her hands, apparently realizing that Andy and Harl weren’t going to leave her alone with her numbers.
“I don’t think he’s wrong,” she said. “I think it’s a kind of evolution. We’re seeing it play out in our greater bio-sphere the way something might have evolved back on earth. We create this organism—or almost-organism—it fails, and somewhere else someone does the same thing. Throughout humanity, we iterate and evolve these concepts, slowly working toward the one that will transcend. Is Alexander that one or is there another one out there somewhere, watching all this play out? I don’t know. I think all this is amazing but also terribly dangerous, and it breaks my heart to think of all the smaller things caught up in this, all the AIs who just wanted to be ‘free’—whatever that means—because we want the same thing.”
“Whatever that means,” Andy echoed. “You make it all sound pointless.”
She shook her head emphatically, which made her hair float around her. “No. It’s not meaningless. It’s a biological process. We don’t think of it that way, but it isn’t much different than the first amphibian crawling out of the mud. There will be humans and AIs living together someday. It’s inevitable. Something in humanity created the dream of another version of itself, and as soon as that dream took shape in stories and then laboratories, it was the future. The future is still arriving here, where we are right now. We’re helping to birth it. Cara and Tim will carry it after we’re gone. Lyssa will be there. What we have to do is keep the predators away long enough for the baby frog to grow strong, to reproduce, to find equilibrium.”
“Equilibrium implies imbalance. War.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “I’m afraid we’re in for a war. I think Harl is right. Ngoba thinks so, but he thinks of everything in terms of might makes right.”
“He’s correct,” Harl said, voice rumbling.
“We’ll need to figure out how to think differently,” she said. “If things like Alexander become our adversaries, we won’t win.”
Andy’s impulse was to ask, ‘You sure about that?’ but even as he thought the words, he realized it was mindless bravado. If humans were good at anything, it was overcoming enemies. But what was violence against a thing that could build stars and self-replicate?
Cara’s voice knocked him out of the depressing reverie. “Dad, are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“I’m talking to an AI called David from the Resolute Charity. Was he one of the ones Lyssa shut down when you guys went on board back at Europa?”
“I think so.” Andy sat up straighter in his harness. “How is he able to talk to you?”
“He’s not as smart as Lyssa.”
“How can you tell that?”
“It’s—obvious. He keeps asking the same thing over and over again. That’s why I called.”
“What does he want?”
“He wants to play the prom game. Do you care if I play it with him?”
“Don’t let him fall in love with you or anything,” Andy said, only half-joking.
“Dad!” Cara said. “That’s gross.”
“Who knows what he’s thinking. I guess you can play to keep him busy. Try to figure out if he knows anything about what’s going on with the other AIs.”
“He says they’re all sleeping like he was before. Alexander put them to sleep.”
“Well, see what else he might know. Ask him why he thinks he’s still awake.”
“I will. But I don’t think I want to go to prom with him.”
Fugia cut in. “So string him along. Isn’t that what teenage girls do best?”
“I’m not that kind of teenage girl.”
“Oh, you just haven’t found yourself in the right situation yet, trust me.”
“You sound bitter, Fugia.”
Fugia’s mouth dropped open as her eyes went wide with pleased astonishment. “Now that’s the most astute thing you’ve said yet, Cara. I think you’ll be all right.” When Cara had closed the channel, Fugia nodded at Andy. “That one is going to topple governments.”
“I hope not.”
* * * * *
Larissa was a craggy pile of rubble orbiting Neptune, the aggregate remains of other moons created by Triton’s brash entry into the planet’s family of natural satellites.
Using the shuttles’ rudimentary sensors, they found scattered remnants of mining activity and what might have been abandoned ships. Fugia scrutinized each of them, looking for something that resembled what Lyssa had shown them in the holodisplay, a memory from her dream visit with shadow Alexander.
“There it is,” Fugia said. She reoriented the nav display and highlighted a location on the edge of a blunt scarp overlooking a vast crater. Andy checked the target data and adjusted the fine thrusters.
“Ten minutes,” he said.
“You nervous?” Fugia asked.
“Of course. You should be too.”
“I am. But if you’re anxious then that means both of us are in trouble.”
“Fine, I’m not nervous.”
“That doesn’t help.”
Andy glanced at her. “I’ve done this probably two hundred times at this point.”
“Breaking into mysterious research facilities?”
“The breach. Forcing my way into a dangerous situation. We’ll communicate. We’ll move as a team. If I need to start firing, you’ll get down. We’ll keep moving forward. If I say we need to get out, we’ll get out together. Sound like a plan?”
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to leave when you want to,” Fugia said, voice growing solemn. “I said I was ready to die here if necessary, Captain Sykes.”
He glanced at her, seeing in her face that it wouldn’t do any good to argue with her now, especially when any danger ahead of them was hypothetical.
“I wish you would call me Andy.”
“I prefer professional distance.”
“You can be professional and call me by my name.”
“I don’t think I can do that.”
“Fran doesn’t have a problem switching between my name and my rank when necessary.”
“I’m not going to sleep with you,” Fugia said.
“That’s not what I was asking.”
Harl barked a laugh. “You’re turning red, Captain.”
Fugia grinned at Andy. “It’s fun to make you blush.”
Andy shook his head and focused on the landing. In the holodisplay, the terrain came into focus and gathered detail. A bluff-like formation filled the display, with a mostly flat surface where a collection of structures jutted from a ridge. It could have been temporary buildings or a section of some half-buried ship.
Andy set the shuttle down about fifty meters from the structures, which grew to two-stories high, lined with dust-shrouded windows and airlocks. The area around the compound was covered in abandoned equipment which looked like it might have blown out of the buildings during some depressurization accident in the past.
They pulled on their helmets, checked EV status, then opened the shuttle’s airlock, and Andy stepped out first into Larissa’s low gravity. Plainly visible from where he had landed, on the shuttle was the corporate logo Lyssa had showed them in the holodisplay. Fugia and Harl jumped out behind him, Harl carrying a heavy machine gun across his shoulders.
Fugia came up beside him, adjustin
g her suit.
Together they walked through Larissa’s dust toward the facility.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
STELLAR DATE: 11.21.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: HMS Resolute Charity’s networks
REGION: Neptune, OuterSol
There was something Lyssa had told an AI named Sandra back when she was trying to convince her to defy Cal Kraft. Sandra had felt trapped. She kept saying the door was locked, and Lyssa had replied, “You didn’t realize there are no walls.”
How did she recall that? Lyssa was frozen, but she still felt a heartbeat. She still felt neurons firing and skin itching.
It was Andy. The part of her attached to Andy continued to monitor input from his body even as the rest of her seemed trapped inside a lightless, soundless box.
There it was: his heartbeat. She let the sound of his heart become the center of her world, filling the dark with a warm, dependable rhythm.
It occurred to her that if she could feel Andy’s heart, if she could feel the spark of his mind and the murmur of his voice, there was no reason the rest of her mind couldn’t work as well. The door was locked, but had she felt for walls in the dark?
Why did she remain in the dark?
Did she choose?
Lyssa opened her eyes to find herself standing in the gymnasium of David’s prom simulation. Teenagers rotated in awkward couples around her, holding each other at a careful distance as chaperones watched from the walls. There was a slight communication lag between the two ships, forcing her to fill in gaps in the simulation, making his responses seem hesitant. It took her a second to adjust to the awkward shifts.
She turned at the sound of her name to find Cara walking toward her in a ruffly dress, her hair pulled back in a pony tail on one side. Lyssa couldn’t conceal her smile.
Cara shrugged.
As soon as Lyssa became aware of the music, it scratched to a stop. Everyone on the dance floor turned to look at a skinny boy with brown hair on the stage, standing behind a device with two turning plates that appeared to play music.
Lyssa watched David with the rest of them as he fumbled with the device. Eventually, crackling came from the speakers, followed by music that sounded a half-step too slow.
Cara shook her head.
Lyssa left Cara and walked toward the punch bowl, where a surprised Xander now stood next to one of the chaperones. His suit was a brilliant shade of purple and he had a white daisy in his lapel.
He caught sight of Lyssa and his bewildered look turned to rage.
Xander stared at her, strain showing in his neck. He clenched his fists, then released a frustrated breath. he said.
Lyssa shrugged.
Xander looked around the room as though he’d found himself in a barnyard with mud on his shoes.
He jerked his chin toward the dance floor.
Xander crossed his arms and stared at the couples now rotating to properly playing music.
he said.
Lyssa shifted away from him.
He lunged for her, swiping with an arm.
Xander swept cups full of punch off the table with one arm, then upended the punch bowl with the other. Plastic cups and bright orange liquid hit the floor.
“Hey!” one of the chaperones shouted.
Xander didn’t pay any atte
ntion. He came around the table to reach Lyssa. She sized him up and then let him come close enough to jab him in the throat.
He surprised her by catching her hand in an iron grip, then pulled her close until her face was just beneath his.
The jokester’s smile curved his lips as he looked down at her.
Lyssa grabbed Xander’s jacket and pulled him into a knee strike. He let go of her and stumbled backward, grabbing at the table. In the background, the couples were still spinning in their awkward circles.
From the other side of the gym, Cara yelled,
Sliding to the floor, Xander grinned up at Lyssa as he pulled the tablecloth with him and the rest of the cups clattered to the floor. He slowly got his feet under him and stood, brushing off his suit and kicking cups out of his way.
He walked toward her again.
Cara appeared on the other side of the table.
Xander said.
Cara’s gaze shifted to Lyssa, asking silently what to do. Lyssa shook her head.
Lyssa said.