by Dan Davis
“You mean the Artificial Persons,” Ram said. “You made the Artificial Persons like that and stuck our heads on their bodies. And you stuck me on one of the older generation’s body.”
“We had enough of that kind of talk from Noomi. The Artificial Persons were grown to exact standards and then harvested, just as you’d grow and harvest a pumpkin.”
“What other augmentations are in this body, exactly?”
“Just the ones you know about and a number of microscopic remote release drug capsules at various places throughout your body. Many capsules will be downstream from your heart and upstream from your head so the blood brain barrier gets flooded as quickly as possible. They are single use only, so we will use them only during the combat itself, if needed.”
If needed, Ram thought. As if they wouldn’t be needed. “What drugs?”
“Oh, nothing particularly special. Various cognitive enhancers to aid decision making, reaction times and visual acuity. Many varieties of amphetamines, methylphenidate, armodafinil, caffeine, theanine, nicotine, that kind of thing. All small as they can be made while retaining functionality. Our Subject Alpha during Mission Two got through with his inner ear implants, drug release capsules and hormone regulators so we were pretty confident back in Mission Three. We would guess that we are allowed a certain amount of artificial implants as a percentage of biomass, seemingly under one percent. Surely, it’s usual for species all over the galaxy to have biologically integrated tech as standard. As always, these are conclusions from suppositions and extrapolation but all we’re really saying is that the Orb has given this as the Zeta Line and we will, therefore, have to abide by it.”
“Why have a Zeta Line at all, I wonder? Why not just let the most technologically advanced species win? That’s a competition, of a kind.”
“We assume the Orb attempts to create a balanced combat between the races.”
“Balanced?” Ram said, pointing at the scene before him.
“Again, consider the range of possible matches. Perhaps it has different rules for the Wheelhunters, they may have a different Zeta Line to us. They might not be allowed communications implants and so on while we are. It’s only logical to conclude so, seeing as how we expect our own Zeta Line will need to change when we face new alien races in the future.”
“If the Orb allows all kinds of cool tech in the future, I wish I could be one of the guys who might fight in here then.”
Milena made a disapproving sound.
“What?” Ram said. “I’m just demonstrating a keen attitude. That’s what you want from me, right?”
“You are fantasizing about a future that you will not possibly see. All you are demonstrating is more resistance to your current reality.”
Ram threw up his arms. “I can’t win.”
“Just focus on what you can actually do,” Milena said.
“Alright, how about this?” Ram said. “What if Dr. Fo or someone could make me a spear constructed from rhino horn?”
“Great idea, I’ll just get the extinct animal tissue selection box sent up from storage.”
“I mean, rhino horn was made from fingernail cells, right? Why can’t you make a weapon from my own cells? It’s biological, just not physically attached.”
“We tried that during the subject selection process at the smokescreen. The subject before Bediako, a remarkable woman named Aelfrith Smith, had bone claws grafted to her hands. Brave of her to do that but she was not allowed. Then Bediako stepped up with a knife made from human bone tissue and the Orb did not allow him through. When he handed it over, the Orb chimed and then you see the result right here.”
Ram shook his head. It was unlikely he would be able to think of something that thousands of genius scientists, engineers and AIs had not come up with before. Milena was right. He should focus on his own task. Getting good enough to have a hope against the alien.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s play this out, shall we?”
“Agreed. Stand back a few paces?”
Rama backed away and the scene jerked back into life. The Wheeler tore Bediako’s throat out, flinging blood and gore across the arena, right where Ram had just been standing. Bediako’s body tumbled with the force of the blow and the alien followed up with a flurry of additional blows that ripped the human into pieces. The monstrous yellow beast stomped Bediako’s viscera into the floor.
Bediako’s skull was knocked skipping and spinning across the arena leaving a smear of blood behind. His jawbone was gone, his face a skinless red pulp and a few ragged vertebrae trailed from the base.
The alien rolled around, splashing in the guts for a few seconds before it rolled away back the way it came.
Ram looked down at the shining red lump that was Bediako’s head with its precious brain inside. It was hard to believe that the quivering tissue, leaking blood and pink-gray matter, held the man’s consciousness. Enough of it, anyway, for the UNOP doctors to transplant it into a new Artificial Person and save his life.
“Rama?” Milena said. “Do you want to watch the Mission Three crew come out into the arena and collect the remains? I’m not a medical doctor but I can explain quite a lot about the processes that saved his life. Such as it is.”
“No,” Ram said, watching the cartwheeling form of the Wheelhunter rolling away, its feet slap-slapping into the distance. “It’s irrelevant. All I need to do is avoid the mistakes that Bediako made. Restart the simulation.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT – MANEUVER
Ob Station Zero filled the screen. An obsidian disk hanging in the darkness of space, reflecting starlight like a black mirror.
“There it is,” Zhukov said, pointing at the huge image on the meeting room wall in Ram’s quarters.
As if any of the crowd needed the words to be spoken. Already many weeks into the long breaking maneuver, they were finally close enough to the Orb that the forward telescopes could pick out detail on it, resolve it such definition that it was like looking out of a window.
Zhukov, Milena, Captain Cassidy, Commander Tamura, Dr. Fo and other crewmembers had joined Rama in his quarters so that they could share the special moment.
And it was special.
Ram sat quietly, his body and mind aching with the most intense eleven weeks of training anyone has ever gone through. Only with the most advanced medical and psychological care ever devised had been able to train so hard, at such an intensity, without suffering a physical or mental breakdown. When he was not training his body, he was training his mind. Even when he slept he was taking in intravenous nutrients and drugs. Having a few moments to simply sit in a chair and watch his crewmates was a remarkable luxury.
Zhukov, a tumbler full to sloshing with vodka, stood beside the wall screen with his chest puffed out. He didn’t seem drunk but he had sunk a fair few of them and Ram could hear it in his voice.
“Many of us have spent the better part of our lives in this project and working on this mission particularly. We have together faced an enormous number of challenges, some of them, indeed, existential. Solar flares, stray streaks of gamma rays and hull-damaging random impacts from asteroids and fabled teapots.” Some people chuckled but Ram did not get the joke. “After our recent, almost-catastrophic internal attack, many of us had despaired. I know. And yet we pulled together. We worked harder. We worked better and we have each of us contributed to bringing us here today.
“Not least of all we have to thank our Subject Alpha, Rama Seti, for fulfilling his genetic destiny, just in time. If he had not given it his all these past weeks then I’m sure many of us would be feeling despair instead of the hope that we each of us now carry. In just two more days, Commander Tamura will perform the final maneuvers to put us into orbit around this magnificent artificial member of our solar system, right here. This thing that is an object designed and built by an alien civilization. An alien civilization that traveled to our home system by an unknown means of transportation but one so advanced that our best physicists struggle to even understand ho
w it can be possible.
“But make no mistake. Orb Station Zero is humanity's gateway into a future so profound that we can scarcely even imagine it. And that future is within our grasp. Because of you. Because of all of you, we will make that future a reality. So raise your glass. Or your cup of coffee or pop your capsule. And let us all drink to each other. We made it this far and here's to being the first crew that will take humanity far into the future. Here’s to each of you and every member of your teams. Here’s to the Victory.”
They cheered and some of the crew smiled but many were grim as they sipped their drinks. Something was troubling Ram but he couldn’t quite place it. Maybe it was the crew’s attitude that he found irritating.
Despite Zhukov’s words, Ram knew the crew felt they were still heading for defeat. They did not believe in Ram. He was not the hero that they had been expecting and they were sad that all their hard work, years and decades of it, the commitment of their lives, was being entrusted to him, a nobody. A replacement sacrificial lamb who had been prepared for the slaughter only to find himself the last chance of humanity. And who was he? An Avar player with no combat experience before he was taken, had his body removed and his head shoved in storage for years before being chosen from a stack of other heads, almost at random. It was no wonder they had doubts. All that planning and it was dumb luck that Ram ended up the last subject standing.
What had Zhukov said in his speech, something about Ram’s genetic destiny? What the hell did that mean? For some reason, he thought of Sifa’s dead body, lying in a pool of blood under the tables in the barracks, the wet stink of metallic blood and the acrid propellant filling the air.
The crew filed out, quietly, back to their stations, some saying goodbye to him and smiling. Others ignored him. Director Zhukov stayed by the screen to speak quietly and informally to a couple of low-ranking marines. Ram noted that they were carrying sidearms only. What did genetic destiny mean? Just doing his best?
“There’s one thing I haven’t been able to shake this whole time, a question I keep asking myself,” Ram said to Milena as they stood in the empty room watching the image of the Orb Station on the big screen behind Zhukov. “Why me? Out of everyone on Earth and everywhere else in the system, why am I the one who is representing the human race?”
“You know why,” Milena said. “A number of events beyond your control brought you here, step by step. Ultimately, it was Alina's actions that brought you the final way.”
“She only did what she did because you people screwed it up,” Ram said, harshly. “But I meant that first step. Why I was even selected into the Project in the first place.”
“We told you. The Project algorithms picked you up in Avar. You tripped a number of automated systems that brought you to our attention and the more we studied you the more we saw your potential and we brought you onto the Victory right before we broke orbit. There was no time to recruit you properly.” She was acting strangely. He was sure he knew her well enough to know she was uncomfortable when she was being evasive. He’d seen it enough times.
Ram nodded, looking at his hands. “It always seemed far-fetched but reasonable enough, I suppose and it was phrased just right, as if it was my own skills that did it. It played on my own narcissism, my ego. I was such a great Avar gamer that the United Nations thought I could be humanity’s champion. I mean, how could that not make me feel good about myself? I bought it, I believed it.”
Milena bit her lip. “And you don’t anymore?”
His genetic destiny.
Ram was realizing it as he spoke the words aloud. “I remember when Noomi’s bomb destroyed the Artificial Persons and you or Dr. Fo said that my AP and Sifa’s AP were the only ones that made it.”
“That’s true, they did.”
“And then when we met with Alina and Noomi right before they went crazy, you showed me the recordings of the APs. You guys said we carried them onboard to provide replacement body parts for the subjects. But only for the ones with a genetic match. So, that means the APs shared a genome with the subjects.”
“That’s right,” Milena said. She swallowed, her eyes flicked to Zhukov.
“You also said, I’m certain, that the APs were grown in womb tanks before the Victory left Earth. And that they took a year in the tank to grow as much as would a normal ten-year-old human. I remember now. You said the words genetic destiny before, months ago, when you told me about the APs. I can’t believe I never thought this through until now. If you didn’t know that I was coming on board until the last minute, how come there was a genetically identical AP waiting for me. No, holy shit, no, there must have been two of them. One that I’m wearing now, the one you culled for me when you woke me up. And a second one that survived Noomi’s blast. But how can that be possible? How can my genome match theirs?”
Milena hesitated for a long moment. “You better talk to Director Zhukov about this.”
“Talk to him?” Ram said, his voice shaking.
He strode over to Zhukov, knocking support crew aside. The Director turned just as Ram reached down and pushed the man against the wall, knocking his tumbler of vodka against the screen where it smashed into pieces. Zhukov’s eyes glazed with the impact. The image of Orb Station Zero dripped with alcohol.
“Subject Alpha,” the closest Marine shouted, “Release the Director immediately or we will use force.”
Both Marines had their pistols aimed at Ram's head and they shouted at him.
“Put him down. Step away, now. Do it now, step back.”
“No,” Ram shouted over his shoulder, his voice coming out in a roar that shook the room. “You won’t hurt me, you need me. Tell them to calm down.”
Zhukov raised a shaking arm and waved a hand downward at the marines. Both slowly lowered their sidearms. Still, they stood ready.
Ram stuck his nose right down into Zhukov’s face. “You and Zuma told me when you woke me up that you have a policy of full and complete honesty. It got obvious pretty quickly that was all a lie. Even still, you do nothing but conceal and deceive. Even now, when we are at the end of the mission you’re still lying to me. It's time to talk, Zhukov. All I want to know is what is so special about me? Why am I here, really? I need to know.”
Zhukov clawed at his neck and Ram released him a little. The Marines hovered behind, muttering reports into their mics. No doubt a whole squad was on their way as backup. Ram expected to have his paralysis switched on at any moment.
Instead, the Director decided to talk. “Yes. You are right. You are special, in a way. You always were.”
Ram eased off but kept one hand on Zhukov's shoulder. The Marines stood tensely at the edges of Ram's peripheral vision.
“I understand that you are feeling emotional,” Zhukov said, glancing at Milena.
Ram grabbed Zhukov and shook him once, hard.
“Stop that,” Ram said. “Milena, if you or anyone else tries to dial down my testosterone or switch me off or anything like that then the next time I am conscious I will pull a fucking Alina on the Director here, right? I’ll tear this ship apart.”
He was banking on them needing him. He hoped the gamble would pay off.
“I understand,” Milena said, though Ram wasn’t sure if he trusted her.
“Now,” Ram said, leaning in close to Zhukov's furious eyes. “Talk.”
Zhukov’s eyes shone. He was not a man used to being threatened. Ram wondered if he had, in fact, pushed his luck a little too far and then Zhukov’s eyes took on the glazed expression of someone using internal communications systems. Was he giving the Marines an order? Would Ram find himself paralyzed after all? Would he ever be rendered conscious again?
“I will do better that explain things to you,” Zhukov said after a moment, pushing Ram’s hands away and straightening his own clothes. “I will show you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE – REPLACEMENTS
He was led - or escorted - to a part of the ship he had not been in before. Six Marines accompani
ed him, Zhukov and Milena as they went. The corridors were empty, the route cleared of crew. Ram experienced a thrill at his own power and influence that these men were afraid of him. That he was influential enough to affect the operation of a priceless, vast spaceship just by threatening violence or noncompliance.
Still, he was afraid of what he might find out about himself.
The group stopped by a doorway into the next ring section and Zhukov turned to look up at Ram.
“You should prepare yourself for an emotional shock,” he said. “One that will have an impact on your sense of identity.”
“Just get on with it,” Ram said, attempting to radiate confidence.
Zhukov set his mouth and nodded to the Marine next to him. The door hissed apart and Ram ducked through, following two Marines and Zhukov through a short connecting passage and into a room he recognized. It was like a day care center or a mental health ward in a hospital. All tables everywhere with toys and coloring pencils on them.
One was a black woman sitting on a sofa being read to by a normal sized crew member. The 7-foot woman looked a lot like Sifa. It was not her, because she had the slack-jawed, blank expression of someone severely lacking in mental faculties and her head was in proportion to her. Even though intellectually he knew it was not Sifa, nor had it ever been her body and yet it was deeply disturbing seeing someone who had been full of life and passion now being nothing more than a shell.
The second giant in the room had his back turned so Ram approached the table. The Marines held back but they watched him closely. Zhukov and Milena stood behind and either side of him at a respectful distance.
The AP was receiving instruction from an older support worker on fitting colored, shaped blocks through a box with shaped holes in it.
Ram looked down on a face that was remarkably similar to his own. The man's skin was paler, his short hair a lighter shade of brown than Ram's own near-black stubble. His head was huge and in proportion to the body but otherwise it was a familiar face. The man struggling with the puzzle game looked up at Ram for a moment with a distinct lack of interest before looking down again. He had shown no recognition. It was like looking into the eyes of a baby.