Ibis searched my backpack and made a rather deliberate show of taking out the bread, cans, and sausages it found inside. “You stole these, didn’t you?”
“To survive,” I replied.
“Yes, I understand it’s a necessary recourse for humans.”
Remarkably, it said nothing more on the matter. Ibis then pulled out a plastic waterproof bag. Inside was a book that I used regularly. Its blue cover had a solar battery that I’d used for over ten years and that had yet to give out on me. There was also a plastic case containing over forty memory cards.
“Don’t be offended, but I checked the contents of the memory cards.”
“There shouldn’t be anything illegal in those,” I said crossly. It was mostly stuff that I had downloaded from working databanks at various colonies. One memory card alone could store thousands of movies and tens of thousands of books, making my collection something of a mobile library. For years, I’d traveled from colony to colony, telling stories for others to hear. As hard as it was to believe now, there was a time when the literacy rate approached 100 percent. Now, people like me who could read were a rarity, which is why storytellers were so welcomed in every colony. During the day, I regaled the children with stories filled with adventure and mystery and the women with romantic stories of love. After nightfall, I narrated stories of a more adult nature to the men. Since my memory cards were filled with old movies and dramas, I also held screenings at the colonies that had projectors. Everyone marveled at the glorious civilizations of the past, at the stories of the time humans ruled the earth.
“Yes, they were nothing more than old novels and films. The copyrights had expired long ago. There is nothing illegal about your telling these stories. Few people bother with copyrights anymore…”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Don’t misunderstand. I only became interested after I heard the rumors about you.”
“Interested?”
“The stories you are collecting focus mainly on those from the late twentieth century to the early twenty-first century. Why is that?”
“Because that was the time humans were at their most glorious,” I answered instantly.
I had read plenty of history but found myself most drawn to the period called the Final Hundred Years. It was the century-long span between the 1940s and 2040s, the period during which the computer was born and surpassed humans. But in those hundred years, humans were able to bring about dramatic revolutions and advancements far greater than in the thousand years that came before. They invented the atomic bomb, popularized the television, sent men to the moon, and covered the earth with a computer network. While on one hand they took away the lives of hundreds of millions in countless wars, their immeasurable love also gave birth to billions on the other. The earth became overpopulated. Humans squandered their resources at an alarming rate and changed the face of the planet. They cut down trees, drove other species to extinction, and built overcrowded cities. They also made many movies and wrote many stories. And they acted out tragedies and comedies too numerous to count.
Then they created a machine with a will and fell to it.
“Aren’t you interested in the years after 2040?” Ibis asked.
“Why are you asking?”
“There isn’t a single story in your collection written after 2039.”
“They’ve been banned in every colony, destroyed mostly.”
“You can download them whenever you’d like if you access our network,” it offered.
“Your network?” I scoffed. “You must be joking! Who’d access that, knowing it’ll only be filled with machine propaganda!”
“You’ll find stories written by humans too,” it pointed out.
“Probably altered to suit your own agenda. You can’t fool me.”
“Oh.” Ibis revealed a sad look—rather, displayed a sad expression on its face to try to sway my emotions. “So you refuse to listen to the truth, just like other humans.”
“Not the so-called truth you’re peddling,” I said. “Now if we’re through here, I want you to leave.”
“I’m not done yet.”
“What, do you want me to tell you a story?” I said sarcastically.
“The opposite. I’d like to tell you one of mine.”
“Like I said, I’m not interested in listening to your—”
“No,” Ibis interrupted and put up a hand. “I won’t talk about the truth.”
“What?”
“I’ll give you my word that I won’t talk about the true history between man and machine.”
“Why?” I asked suspiciously.
“Because you don’t want to hear it. I won’t force you to listen to anything you don’t want to hear. The story I want you to hear is fictitious.”
“Fictitious?”
“That’s right. It wasn’t in any of your memory cards. A story you probably don’t know. It wasn’t written by a machine either. It’s a story written by a human during the end of the twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century, long before a truly self-conscious AI was born. Now this shouldn’t violate your taboo.” Ibis produced a new memory card from somewhere and toyed with it. “Well? Don’t you want to hear it?”
Ibis let out a chuckle. Where had it learned that expression? That devilish smile and the silver card pinched between its fingers smelled like a trap.
“Why did you bring that here?” I asked.
“Because I wanted you to hear it. Like I told you when we first met. I only want to talk.”
“Why should I have to hear it?”
“It’s a good story.”
“And you chased me around for that?”
“Yes.”
“Then give it to me. I’ll read it myself.”
“No, I’m going to read it to you,” it insisted.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t trust you. You say you’ll read it, but then you might just toss it aside. I can only be certain if I read it to you. There’s also another reason.”
“What is it?”
Ibis flashed its white teeth and smiled. “It’s fun to tell stories to humans.”
I groaned to myself. Just how much of what it said could I believe? And to begin with, were machines capable of feeling that something was fun? It could be trying to indoctrinate me with useless propaganda. Maybe it intended to brainwash me and use me to spread its machine ideology to other humans. But that was too obvious and idiotic a plan. My thinking wasn’t going to change just because I was made to hear a story. As ignorant as machines were to the inner workings of the human psyche, I couldn’t believe that they were this stupid. In which case, perhaps Ibis had another purpose in mind.
My natural curiosity was piqued. I became fascinated by Ibis’s identity and enigmatic behavior and wanted desperately to figure out what it was thinking. I hated to leave a mystery unsolved. That impulse to learn what others did not know and did not strive to know—that was what had compelled me to leave my home colony.
If Ibis was acting out a calculated psychological move to arouse my interest, you had to be impressed.
“It’s really fiction? It isn’t real?” I asked.
“I’m not lying,” it answered.
“It’s not any kind of propaganda?”
“Perhaps that’s for you to decide.”
I made up my mind. Okay, I’ll play your game. I was bored and wouldn’t be able to move for a couple more days anyway. It was just the thing to pass the time.
“All right. Let’s hear it.”
Ibis nodded and inserted the memory card in the book. She opened the book on her lap and prepared to read.
“Why don’t you just download it into your head?”
“This puts me more in the mood,” she answered.
“You’re a strange one.”
“That’s because I’m a machine.”
Ibis looked down at the book, although it was the camera eyes on the goggles doing the actual read
ing.
“I should ask, are you familiar with Japanese customs of the early twenty-first century?”
“Sure. I’ve read plenty from that period.”
“And you’re familiar with Star Trek?”
“Yeah. It was a popular television series during the latter half of the twentieth century. What about it?”
“Have you seen the actual episodes?”
“A couple.”
“Then you won’t need any annotations. The first story is called, ‘The Universe on My Hands.’ It’s set in Japan in 2003, and also in space in the distant future.”
Ibis began to read in a clear, sweet voice.
STORY 1
THE UNIVERSE ON MY HANDS
The detective, wearing a gray coat, showed up at my door just when the high-speed shuttlecraft Dart landed on the tripolium mining base on Choudbury 1.
“My God…”
Xevale took one look at the brutality wrought upon the base and was struck speechless. Several corpses lay in a heap in the corridor on the other side of the air lock. The bodies were twisted, their faces contorted in agony and their arms outstretched toward the air lock. No doubt they had tried to escape the base by shuttle but died before they could reach the air lock.
“Any external injuries?” Xevale asked.
Nicole Cristofaletti held a life scanner over the bodies. “Negative,” she responded, her voice trembling. Her face looked ashen beneath the visor of her helmet. For a medic young enough to be called a girl, the situation was too much to handle.
“I’m not detecting any toxic gasses in the air.” The science officer Jian Jiji studied the readings from the ENV analyzer. “Radiation levels within normal parameters.”
“Keep your V-suits on,” ordered Xevale. “There could be microbes in the air.” He held out his stunner and led the away team toward the control room.
They found four more dead bodies inside the control room. The faces of the dead were twisted in agony, like those of the others. Xevale went to one of the control panels. Since it operated on the standard Federation system, he was able to work the controls without a hitch. He tapped on the panel and called up a damage report.
All green. There was no evidence of an attack from outside the base, nor was there evidence of sabotage from within. All systems were operating normally, and the report showed no record of an alert.
Was this the work of the DS?
Xevale’s mind filled with suspicion. They knew the Doomsday Ship had fled to this planet. Then there was the distress signal they had received from the mining base two hours ago. It was crazy not to assume that the two weren’t connected.
But what kind of weapon was capable of killing without leaving a mark on the bodies?
“Celestial to away team.” It was the voice of Captain Ginny Wellner on the comm. “Xevale, were you able to find any answers?”
“Nothing so far. What is the DS doing now?”
“The plasma storm is getting worse over here, and we’re losing our sensors. We wouldn’t be able to find the ship if it were right under our noses.”
A plasma storm was whipping around Choudbury, a pulsating variable star emitting a high-intensity electromagnetic pulse. Any electrical equipment classified level E or higher was affected by the storm. On this base, however, none of the robots were level E or higher, and all of the equipment lower than E was specially equipped with a shield. It was because of this punishing environment that Choudbury 1 yielded the precious energy source tripolium.
“We’re going to look around a bit more, Captain. We may find some survivors in the mine shafts,” said Xevale.
“Understood. Be careful.”
“Hmm…!”
I, Ginny Wellner, captain of the deep space research vessel USR 03 Celestial, took a big stretch away from the computer monitor and racked my brain.
“He sure has made things difficult as usual…” I mumbled to myself.
The security chief Xevale Belzniak was thought to have the most writing talent among the crew of the Celestial. A member since the very beginning, he had an abundance of technical knowledge and originality, often coming up with fantastic ideas. On the other hand, his stories were hatched only for his satisfaction and often ignored any previous plot development. Thanks to his recklessness, last year’s Delta Space cycle had become riddled with inconsistencies and had to be concluded with one of those “and then I woke up” kind of endings. Contradictions had also surfaced in the Mutant Planet cycle, and then I got an earful from the other crewmembers, though I suppose I was partly to blame for not having kept a tighter rein on Xevale.
The Doomsday Ship (DS) cycle currently in progress revolved around tracking down the ultimate weapon left behind by an ancient species that had been wiped out two million years ago. It was a sentient starship with the ability to repair itself and evolve. It was also programmed to destroy any ship it encountered. The story, suggested by the combat officer Jim Warhawk, opened with a crackling battle scene between the DS and several Federation battleships.
But the story had stalled about a month ago. Which is to say, everyone had forgotten that the Celestial was a research vessel with only the barest of weapons. We were pitted against a formidable enemy that not only had the firepower to annihilate four Federation battleships but the ability to evolve by assimilating the data from the ships it destroyed. There was no logical way that the Celestial could defeat it in a head-on battle. For this reason, the story dragged on with the research vessel only chasing the DS from star to star. One skirmish (written by helmsman Chad Est Baroudeur) against several unmanned fighters launched from the DS provided only a brief glimmer of excitement.
The one crewman I could count on at a time like this was Shawn Mornane in Maintenance. He had come up with some incredible solutions in the past when a story hit a dead end. But maybe he was busy in real life, judging from his declining number of submissions lately.
Science Officer Titea Peche ended up posting a great idea in the forums instead. What if we lured the DS to a planet that produces tripolium and blew it up, planet and all?
Various opinions flew back and forth over the forums. The chief science officer, Meyer S. Mercury, who was in charge of research, assured us that a concentrated shot with the graser could trigger a chain explosion of the tripolium on the planet. (At least that was the way it was written.) But how do we lure the DS to the planet? What if the energy source for the DS’s warp core was tripolium like the Celestial? That way, it would seem natural for the DS to make a stop at a tripolium-rich planet to replenish its energy.
Since Titea wasn’t much of a writer, I took over the writing duties for that section. After learning that the DS was headed for the Choudbury planetary system, the Celestial went after it in order to carry out the plan. (Of course, Titea is credited for having proposed it in the story as well.)
As soon as the new material was uploaded, Francois DuCoq in the Steward’s Department raised a question. Are there any humans on that planet? Meyer chimed in that there had to be. Robots did not function properly on the planet because of the fierce plasma storms around the Choudbury system, which meant that the mining equipment had to be operated by humans. How many workers are there? Maybe a couple hundred. We can’t possibly accommodate that many on our ship. Then how about we say ninety?
It was decided that there were eighty-eight workers on the mining base on Choudbury 1. We needed to extract them from harm before we could execute the plan to blow up the planet along with the DS.
That was how the story had unfolded three days ago. And then Xevale came up with his plot proposal—one in which the Celestial received a distress signal from the mining base the moment it came out of warp and entered the planetary system—only today. And how the away team took the shuttlecraft Dart to the base only to find that the workers had all been killed by some mysterious force.
“This story better have a resolution,” I said to myself, dubious about the whole turn of events. Knowing Xevale, he
probably didn’t have an explanation for the workers’ deaths. He only liked to create these kinds of mysterious incidents.
I could just ignore Xevale’s plot submission. But then simply destroying the planet and the DS as planned didn’t provide much of a catharsis. The story could use one more twist before the end. After thinking about it long and hard, I pasted the text written by Xevale onto a new web page, created a link from the contents page, and clicked PUBLISH.
Just as I opened a new tab on the browser to verify the changes on the website, there was a knock at the door.
“Coming!”
I left the computer running and went to answer the door. I couldn’t remember ordering anything by mail order. The only people that came knocking on the door on a late Saturday afternoon were either newspaper solicitors or some lady from a local religious group. I’ll just get rid of them.
Standing on the other side of the peephole were a young policeman and a balding middle-aged man.
I cautiously opened the door just a crack, and the middle-aged man asked, “Are you Nanami Shiihara?” He pulled out his ID from his gray coat and held it up in front of my face. Although I’d seen plenty of police IDs being flashed on TV, this was my first exposure to the real thing.
“My name is Iioka. I’ve been asked by the Niigata Prefectural Police to investigate an incident. Do you know a young man by the name of Yuichiro Tanizaki?”
Yuichiro Tanizaki—several seconds went by before I could retrieve that name from my memory. It was the name of Shawn Mornane in Maintenance.
“Yes, I know him,” I replied.
“Is he a member of your club?” the detective asked.
“Yes, what about him?”
“He killed someone.”
In that instant my mind stopped functioning. I felt nothing, not even shock. This story was so unrealistic that I couldn’t process it.
I could believe any other story. A sentient warship destroying four Federation battleships, a hyperdimensional vortex swallowing up planets, the vicious shape-shifting mechanoid reaper, the existence of the great Sower who scattered the seeds of intelligent life throughout the galaxy—for all that I could suspend my disbelief. But Shawn killing someone…
The Stories of Ibis Page 2