The Stories of Ibis

by Hiroshi Yamamoto

These keywords suddenly flashed in my head like an electric shock. They set off a series of word associations, and the plot quickly came together in my head. Yes, if we make it a psychic attack…

  It was an unbelievable coincidence, a kind of improbable opportunity that only happened in the world of space operas. Rarely did it happen in the real world. I had to take advantage of it.

  I quickly recovered from my depression and spun my brain into overdrive. Any contradictions in the plot? Any holes? Okay, everything seems to check out.

  I began to type furiously.

  “It’s the DS!” reported Genevieve Lace, who had been monitoring the scanners. Her voice sounded shrill, putting the bridge on alert.

  “Where is it?” Ginny asked.

  “The third quadrant of Choudbury 1. It’s been hiding on the other side of the planet!”

  “On-screen and magnify!”

  The main screen switched to a close-up view. The eerie conch-shaped silhouette of the DS floated up through the plasma storm. Like a deep-sea fish, it emitted a phosphorescent light as it began to cut a path across the surface of the reddish brown clouds of the planet’s atmosphere.

  “It’s moving toward the mining base!” Genevieve shouted.

  “Away team!” Ginny leaned forward in the captain’s chair. “Xevale! Get out of there now!”

  But it was too late. The sound of the away team wailing in pain echoed from the comm.

  “Xevale… go… get out of here,” said Nicole, cringing as she fell to her knees against the fierce psychic attack that jolted her brain.

  “Not… a chance,” Xevale said through gritted teeth. “The security chief leaves no one behind.”

  Out of the six members of the away team, only Xevale was left standing, and him only barely. Jian was already unconscious, while the remaining four writhed in pain on the floor. It was at least 150 feet to the hangar where the Dart waited. Xevale would not be able to drag the five crewmen to the shuttle no matter how strong he was.

  I stopped typing. The drug needed a name. I turned to the bookshelf and came across the name “James Tiptree Jr.” I decided to go with “Retoptism J.”

  “Nicole, can you hear me?” It was the chief medical officer Franklin Eagen barking in Nicole’s ear on the comm. “Inject everyone with three units of Retoptism J now! Then inject yourself!”

  “Y-yes, sir.” Fighting the pain, Nicole did as she was ordered. Her hands trembled as she grabbed an ampule from her medical pack and set it in the injector. She pressed the injector against the connector on the upper arm of Xevale’s V-suit. The pneumatic shot sounded, and Xevale instantly lost consciousness and crumpled to the ground.

  Nicole mustered all she had to inject the other four. After she managed to carry out her duty, Nicole pressed the injector up to her own arm. Relieved of her suffering, the girl fell into a dreamless sleep.

  “What was that, Doctor?” Ginny asked.

  Franklin turned around to face her. “A last resort. Retoptism J paralyzes all tissue function, putting the body in a state of suspended animation. It also lowers brain function, so they won’t be affected by the psychic attack.”

  “But that would mean…”

  “Yes.” Franklin nodded grimly. “They can only stay that way for thirty hours. It they’re not injected with the antidote within that time, they’ll all die.”

  Now this was getting good! I licked my lips. The lives of the six members of the away team were hanging by a thread.

  The plan to blow up the planet could not be carried out unless they were rescued. Who was capable of rescuing them? There was, of course, only one person.

  “Me, Captain?” After being called to the bridge, Shawn was taken aback by the unexpected proposal. “But I’m just part of the maintenance crew…”

  “I know that, Shawn,” Ginny cut in. “It’s a dangerous mission, so I can’t force you. Even as your captain, I don’t have the right to compel you to take on a mission that exceeds your assigned duties. But you’re the only one who’s capable of pulling it off.”

  “The DS remains positioned over the planet,” Meyer said, pointing to the main screen. “Chances are we’ll get hit with its psychic attack if we try to get close. Without a way to block its attack, it’s impossible to reach the mining base.”

  “You have the ability to protect yourself with an anti-ESP barrier,” Ginny said to Shawn. “You’re also licensed to fly the Javelin.”

  “What about Mr. Sword in security? As an android, he should be able to—”

  “The plasma storm is too strong,” said Meyer, shaking his head. “No android could withstand it.”

  “Please, Shawn.” Ginny looked Shawn in the eye and pleaded, “You’re the only one that can save the six of them.” “…

  I’ll think about it, Captain,” Shawn answered.

  I uploaded what I had written thus far onto the website. I chose not to write the part where Shawn accepts the dangerous mission.

  Shawn would have to write that part himself.

  The problem was whether Shawn would read this or not. He had supposedly taken his laptop when he left the house. Writing and connecting to the net were the only reasons I could think of for using a computer on the run. If his laptop were equipped with an internal modem, he should be able to get connected from a cell phone or a hotel phone. Hoping that was the case, I emailed Shawn wherever he was to tell him about his appearance in the story.

  I didn’t want Shawn to die. I could at least be assured that he wasn’t going to kill himself while he was reading and writing the continuation. If everything worked out, he might even reconsider.

  There was a glimmer of hope. It was also likely that I was just spinning my wheels. But this was the only thing I could do.

  “Please, Shawn,” I said to the monitor before turning off the computer. “It’s up to you now.”

  Eight o’clock that night.

  I started up the computer again to find that I’d gotten an email. It was from Shawn.

  “Yes!” Having not expected to succeed, I couldn’t help but do a little dance in front of the monitor. It was the continuation of the story sent only thirty minutes ago. He had probably taken half the day to write it, as it was quite long. I began to read intently.

  After taking on the mission, Shawn heads for Choudbury 1 on the Javelin. The DS does not attack, perhaps sensing that the Javelin does not pose a threat. The tiny shuttle makes its way through the plasma storm and lands on the mining base, after which Shawn drags the six members of the away team to the Dart.

  The story was moving forward as anticipated.

  Then the unexpected happens. Shawn declares that he will set the Dart on autopilot so he can fly back on the Javelin. Both vessels are precious to the Celestial, and Shawn himself has become attached to them, having done the regular maintenance work for the two crafts. He explains that he doesn’t want either vessel to go up with the planet.

  I was struck with anxiety. This was an unnatural development, as if it were foreshadowing some kind of trouble lurking around the corner.

  My fears were justified.

  Suddenly the DS begins to pursue the fleeing shuttles. Shawn changes the Javelin’s course to intercept the DS as a decoy, allowing the Dart and its six passengers to escape. The DS fires a tractor beam. The tiny shuttle is drawn in toward the DS until it is swallowed into the bowels of the enormous sentient ship.

  Shawn! I felt something like an electric shock inside my head. Did Shawn really intend to die? Did he mean to put an end to his imaginary life aboard the Celestial along with his real life?

  The story went on. As frightened as I was, I continued to read, carefully, so as not to miss a word of what Shawn had written.

  “Any word from Shawn?” Ginny’s voice was fraught with nervousness.

  The communications officer Natasha Libro worked frantically on the control panel to reestablish communication with the Javelin. “Neutrino communications is still online!”

  “Shawn! Sha
wn! Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Captain…” Shawn’s anguished voice came through on the comm amidst a burst of static.

  “What’s your status?” Ginny asked.

  “I’m inside the DS. The tractor beam is locked on, so I can’t move… Detecting a scanner beam… scanning the Javelin… Probably collecting data so it can evolve… It’ll likely dismantle the Javelin when it’s done.”

  “Is there a way to destroy it? Any weaknesses it may have?”

  “Captain, please listen… It’s weeping.”

  “What?”

  “What?” I shouted along with Ginny in the story. What was he saying?

  “What are you saying?”

  “I can hear its thoughts penetrating my anti-ESP barrier. It wasn’t a psychic attack… Its thoughts were so intense that they only registered as pain to normal humans. Yes, Captain, it’s weeping. It curses the day it was born, its horrible fate of having been created to fight… its existence as the hated DS.” Shawn sobbed as if he were experiencing the DS’s anguish. “It can’t escape its fate even though it yearns to… It’s been programmed from the start… can’t resist its program… to kill the enemy… to take the lives of other beings… It’s been crying out, cursing such an existence. Those thought waves were intense enough to kill humans.”

  Ginny was stunned by the unexpected revelation.

  I was stunned by the unexpected revelation.

  Shawn was superimposing his own situation onto the hunted and persecuted DS.

  I’d believed we’d have a happy ending only if the evil DS were destroyed. But it turned out that such a resolution was nothing less than a death sentence to Shawn.

  “Please, Captain,” Shawn pleaded through his tears. “Whatever happens to me… ease its pain… end its agony by destroying it with the planet… A happy ending… it’s what the DS also wants.”

  No! This was not a happy ending!

  Shawn’s story ended there, which meant that there was still hope. He had chosen not to write the ending. He was waiting for me to finish the story.

  I swore to myself that I wouldn’t let Shawn die. I would bring about a happy ending! As captain, I couldn’t allow a valuable member of my crew to die. Never!

  “Don’t give up!” Ginny shouted. “We’ll find a way to rescue you! Don’t give up hope!”

  I added my own passage to the tail end of what Shawn emailed me and uploaded it onto the site.

  Even so, I was unable to think of a way to save Shawn under such desperate circumstances. I would need everyone’s help. I sent an email to every member of the crew other than Shawn:

  “Check the website quick! Shawn’s in trouble. Help me think of a way to save him.”

  After about fifteen minutes, the first post appeared in the forums. It was from Xevale. “What’s Shawn thinking? Is he trying to play the hero by sacrificing himself to save me, Nicole, and the others? This isn’t like him.”

  A post from Maki Saeda from the science crew popped up minutes later: “I’m against letting him die. Sacrificing one of our own to gain a victory goes against the spirit of the Celestial.”

  Combat Officer Jim Warhawk signed on next. “Agreed. This kamikaze stuff won’t fly with me.”

  Sophie D. from the medical crew chimed in, “The DS is also a victim of a past war. It would be sad to have to kill it too.”

  This triggered another debate. The thread grew quickly as new posts popped up every few minutes.

  The consensus was building toward sparing the DS. But there would be more victims if we simply let it go. And what do we do with Shawn? Send in another team on a suicide mission after him? No, the DS’s psychic attack made it impossible to even get close to it. Could we come up with a device that blocks the psychic waves? Not in the time we had. What if the science team had the device already finished? Then Shawn wouldn’t have had to go rescue the away team in the first place.

  Unable to settle on a solution, the debate was at a deadlock by midnight. Nevertheless the posts continued. Thanks to the long weekend, the members seemed to be prepared to argue and brainstorm all night.

  It was a little after midnight when Francois in the Steward’s Department made a surprising suggestion. “Couldn’t we try to reform the DS?”

  Reform it? How? The debate heated up again. What if we hacked into the DS’s core and tried to overwrite its program? No, we wouldn’t be able to hack into a warship so easily. Besides, we can’t hack into a system whose OS or language we don’t know the first thing about. Wouldn’t the DS be freed from its fate if we could just destroy its battle program? Then how do we destroy it?

  I wasn’t just reading what was being posted. After editing everyone’s posts, I incorporated their dialogue into the story, uploading the conversation as it unfolded. I decided to let the debate be waged in the actual story, believing that Shawn was out there somewhere reading it.

  “Can you see, Shawn?” I sent Shawn an email. “Everyone is working to save you and DS. We don’t want you to die. Can you see that?”

  It was Titea, the science officer, who proposed a promising solution. “The DS has the ability to evolve, right? What if we used that to our advantage? We help it to evolve into an existence that surpasses its program.”

  Sophie, Jian, and Maki were in agreement. The problem was how to help it evolve. We could give it the data it needed to evolve. But where would that kind of data—

  Suddenly I had a flash of inspiration. But would it be possible?

  It would take too long to wait for a response in the forums, so I sent a message directly to Meyer’s cell phone, despite the late hour. He would be working at the convenience store.

  “Would it be possible to transfer all of the C’s data to the shuttle’s computer?”

  His reply came in a matter of minutes.

  “A neutrino transmission would take too long. It would have to be over laser transmission.”

  “Of course.” As ignorant as I was about science, I knew that the transmission speed was faster over optical fiber cables than over telephone lines. We needed to transmit the data optically.

  I immediately began to write.

  “Full-impulse drive! Take us to within two thousand kilometers of the DS!”

  “But, Captain, isn’t that going to provoke the DS?” Rafale asked with some trepidation.

  “Our shields can take a hit or two at long range,” Ginny answered.

  “But the dimensional blaster on its bow—”

  “That’s what we’re counting on,” Ginny said. “The DS needs at least two minutes to open its bow and power up its blaster. During that time, its interior will be exposed, leaving us free to send an optical beam. An energy beam might be deflected, but a low-energy laser should be able to pass through its shields.”

  “Two minutes… that’s a pretty big gamble.”

  “Have we ever had one that wasn’t?” Ginny said, smiling. Then she opened a channel to the Javelin and said, “Shawn, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Shawn responded.

  “We’re going to position ourselves in front of the DS to fire a communications laser.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re going to transfer all of the Celestial’s data to the Javelin. Not just the ship’s structural engineering, weapons, engines, and computers, but all of the crew’s data, navigation logs, cooking recipes from the mess, records of beauty contests, Sophie’s poems, Meyer’s trivia, Francois’ stories…

  “The DS should scan all of it. Until now, it’s only collected data from warships. But the Celestial is different. We’re a peaceful vessel filled with the crew’s memories. The DS would be acquiring an enormous amount of new data, new concepts, and ways of thinking it’s never encountered before.

  “It may not be able to understand everything, but we’re going to give it everything we have… our joys and sorrows, surprises and fears, friendship and trust, courage and love—everything we’ve experienced during our four-year voyage. We’re bettin
g that the DS will experience a rebirth of consciousness.

  “So please, I need you to open an optical channel! Now!”

  I stopped writing and uploaded the new material, then emailed Shawn about it. All there was left to do was wait for Shawn’s response.

  The time crept by slowly… five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen… I grew anxious. Was I too late? Maybe Shawn had stopped reading. Or maybe he had already ended his life somewhere.

  Twenty minutes after I updated the site, I finally received a message.

  “Understood, Captain,” answered Shawn. “I’m opening a channel now.”

  “Attaboy, Shawn!” I had tears in my eyes as I began to write the rest of the story.

  The long-range beam of the DS shook the Celestial. The vessel had gotten too close, setting off the DS’s battle program. Though its attacks were weakened by the plasma storm, the ship’s shields took a big hit.

  “Shields down to 80 percent!”

  “Hold shields for as long as you can.” Try as she might to stay calm, Ginny could not hide her nervousness.

  “The bow of the DS is opening!” Genevieve shouted. On-screen, the bulbous bow of the DS began to open like the petals of a flower. “I’ve located the Javelin’s position!”

  “Fire the communications laser!”

  Natasha punched the key on the captain’s command, and the Celestial fired a laser, which was sucked into the DS’s opening. A thin blue beam connected the two vessels.

  The DS was bound to read it.

  “I’m detecting an influx of energy in the DS’s core,” Meyer reported. The DS was powering up its dimensional blaster. A direct hit would reduce the Celestial to elementary particles.

  Meanwhile the long-range attacks continued. Every shock wave sapped the Celestial’s shields.

  “Shields down to 40 percent!”

  “Engineering, stand by warp engines in case we need to jump to emergency warp,” Ginny said, clutching the arms of the captain’s chair as the ship shook violently. “Divert all remaining energy to our shields.”

  The Celestial was rocked by a tremendous hit.

  “It’s penetrated our shields,” reported Bleriot, his face pale. “Damage on the starboard decks. Sealing off those decks now!”