The Pouakai

  “Lost?”

  “You’re smart. Figure it out. What is the plan for your Children now? Your location has been discovered. It’s already become uninhabitable outside. There’s no place for your Children to go. My people know that the Pouakai and Kakamaku are connected to this island and will stop at nothing to get rid of you. You don’t have…”

  “Three more missiles,” it said, followed instantly by the hum and crack. The vessel bucked. I flew through the air, and back against the floor. A thundering roar shook the vessel, from outside. I got to my feet, unsteady, holding on to a wall. The floor was tilted. Something had moved the vessel, or maybe dug out part of the hillside it sat on.

  “That seemed closer,” I said.

  “My detection system is affected by the energy release of the detonations.”

  The computer was doing it; telling me what was going on. The missiles were getting to it. Eventually one would get close enough to vaporize this vessel, the computer, and the tubes of embryonic aliens. And me. The computer had to know it. What would it do now, faced with the failure of its plans? It had been able to adapt to much of what it found here on Earth. Would it continue deflecting the incoming missiles, or did it have an alternative plan?

  “Additional warheads inbound. Ballistic in nature.”

  My chest tightened.

  “Fifteen, correction, now twenty-three ballistic warheads have been launched from submarines in the Pacific Basin, along with land-based missiles from China and Russia. Now counting thirty-one warheads enroute to this location.”

  My God. Baker had gotten through to Washington, and convinced them to act. Somehow they’d been able to get the Russians and Chinese to go along with it too.

  “How long?” I asked.

  “First impact in four minutes, last one three minutes later. Now counting thirty-seven inbound warheads.”

  I slumped to the floor. This was it. He’d had trouble knocking down three missiles as they approached from the Ohio, but thirty-seven? This island would be a big steaming hole in the water in just a few minutes, and we’d be part of the steam.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You don’t have a chance now.”

  “Odds of tracking and destroying all incoming warheads, zero. Primary mission failed.”

  All sorts of clicking and humming started. The Kakamaku tanks burbled, and with a loud slosh, drained away. A deeper hum took over, and the floor vibrated.

  “Termination protocol activated. Unable to continue mission. Report to creators required.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  With a great shaking rumble, the floor surged upward. I collapsed to the ground, with gravitational forces pushing down hard on my body. The rumble turned into a basso hum, and the acceleration increased. I lay on the floor in agony as the pressure mounted. It felt like at least five or six gees, then more. We were moving. My vision narrowed and everything turned gray. The whole vessel was moving into the sky, into space. The ship was heading home.

  6

  I opened my eyes, and tried to focus. Every joint in my body ached, and I had a throbbing headache. The bright light from the ceiling made it worse, so I squeezed my eyes shut. A faint hum filled the air, and I risked looking around again.

  The room hadn’t changed. I lay on the floor, backpack at my side. I reached for it, and got the surprise of my life as I slowly rebounded off the ground. For a moment I panicked, thinking I’d crash back down again. Instead, I gently plopped onto the ground. I stood up and the motion again launched me momentarily toward the ceiling. I landed lightly on my feet, and I tried to steady myself.

  Then I remembered the missiles, the incoming warheads, and the push of acceleration. The computer had launched us upward, I assumed, toward its home. If we were in space though, why was there still gravity?

  “Can you hear me?”

  “You asked that question earlier. The answer is still yes.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Yeah. Sorry.”

  I gingerly tested my footing. Using my toes, I could push myself up a couple of feet upward, before gently dropping back down. I tried walking, but it was difficult. I had to lean over to get any traction, and once I’d built up a little speed, found it nearly impossible to stop. I bumped into the walls or slid across the floor several times before I got the hang of it, using just my toes to move. I crossed to my backpack, and slipped my arms through the straps.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “In space.”

  Literalist computer. “I meant, relative to the outside world, where are we, and where are we going?”

  “We are a distance from your planet approximately equal to that of your moon’s orbit. Our destination should be easy to deduce. As my mission failed, I am required to return to my origin and report on the civilization and conditions on this planet.”

  Already at the moon’s orbit? “How long ago did we takeoff?”

  “Three hours, twelve minutes.”

  Three hours? It took the Apollo missions three days to get this far. Then I realized why. “We’re still accelerating, aren’t we?”

  “Yes. Otherwise you would be in freefall.”

  “How the hell are you able to store enough fuel for a mission like this?”

  “The energy this vessel uses is not stored onboard. It is drawn from the fabric of the space we are travelling through.”

  Another shock. No fuel to carry, and a limitless supply wherever you went. This was a technology far beyond anything humanity possessed. If only our engineers could have gotten their hands on this vessel…

  I shook my head, and practiced moving around the room again. With the low acceleration of the ship, I only weighed twenty pounds or so; a tenth of what I did on Earth. Within a few minutes, I found it easy enough to move, but I had to plan where I wanted to stop a lot earlier than normal. I walked around the room several times, before I passed the rod ladder leading up to the processing center. I tried climbing up, and found it even easier than walking. I pulled myself up with my hands, not even bothering to step on the rods. In just a few seconds, I was back inside the upper room; nothing had changed. I drifted down onto the top of one of the boxes in the room, and sat cross-legged.

  A wave of sadness came over me, as the reality of my situation became apparent. I’d survived a nuclear attack, and knew that this computerized invader wouldn’t be a problem for Earth again. I wouldn’t make it back though, and would probably die of thirst or CO2 poisoning in the next week or two. Getting on board had been a bittersweet victory.

  I took a pouch of water from the backpack and flipped open the spout. I didn’t see any reason to conserve it. I’d die eventually, no matter how long I stretched the supply out. The water was warm and tasteless, but satisfying.

  “Will it take you another seventeen hundred years to get home again?”

  “Yes. The distance between our star systems does not change appreciably over the duration of my mission.”

  “There won’t be much of me left by the time you get there.”

  “During the cruise portion of the journey, the temperature inside the vessel falls to approximately one hundred degrees below zero, on your Celsius scale. The energy drawn to power this vessel prevents it from falling any further. This will happen gradually over the next few months, so you will not be alive to feel the cooling. It will be enough to preserve your body for study.”

  “Study? I thought you had all that information from the internet stored somewhere inside you.”

  “That data is stored. However, having a physical specimen will help improve our knowledge, and allow for more accurate plans to be made.”

  Something flipped in my stomach. “Plans?”

  “Of the previous one hundred fifteen colonization missions, two returned under conditions similar to this one. That is, a technologically advanced civilization had arisen between the time of my initial departure, and my arrival here. On those missions, the attempts to colonize the planets had failed, and the vessels retu
rned to the home world. A detailed analysis of those planets had been accomplished before departing for home however, so that the creators could design a return mission to those planets, in order to destroy them.”

  A wave of nausea came over me. “You destroyed two living civilizations?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Is it not obvious? Those civilizations knew about our presence; a civilization that had attempted to colonize their world. If successful, our colonization would have meant the end of their species. Any of those species aware of our intention would be forced to find us and destroy us before another attempt could be made to colonize their planet. The creators of this vessel, in order to preserve their own civilization, were required to destroy the others, just as they will be required to destroy your species.”

  My stomach churned, and I retched onto the floor. When I couldn’t puke any more, I took a rag out of the backpack and wiped my face. The taste of bile was strong in my mouth.

  I wanted to shout at the computer, to change its mind, but there wasn’t any point. I couldn’t change its programming.

  Dizzy and sick, I had a hard time moving in the light gravity. I dropped slowly through the open hatch, landing on the hard floor below. It wasn’t over yet. It might take several thousand years, but eventually, when all this was just a dim footnote in history books, the creators of the ship would be back. And when they arrived their plan wouldn’t be colonization, but annihilation.

  7

  How long did I wander the room? My watch said a couple of days, but I had no real sense of it. I slept some, ate a few energy bars, and drank a lot of the water. None of it really registered, however.

  When I rooted through the survival pack and saw only two energy bars and half a bag of water left, my survival instinct snapped to life. My subconscious yelled at me: What are you going to do? Sit here and die? Do something, do anything; just don’t be a victim.

  No, I wouldn’t be a victim. I thought about survival school at the Air National Guard, so many years ago. I tried to remember the training I’d received on what to do if you found yourself trapped in enemy territory.

  One; take stock of your location, evaluate your situation. Find anything you can use to your advantage. I looked around. It was the same huge empty room as before. With a sigh, I stood up and slowly walked the perimeter of the room again. This time, I looked closely at the equipment on the walls and ceiling. When I got to the door, I stopped. The surface flat and featureless, it had served as a ramp when it was opened back on Tikopia. The wall around the edge of the door was unremarkable too, except for one faintly-marked area. A spade-like outline two feet long, with a recessed bar in the wide end, reminded me of the manual release lever on my planes. If it was a manual release though, what the hell would it be for? The computer said it controlled everything on the vessel.

  I stared at the handle for a long time, thinking. Eventually, I continued around the perimeter of the room. Nothing else looked familiar, or useable. I pulled myself up the ladder, and returned to the processing center, to see if I’d missed anything there. I started with each of the featureless boxes scattered around the room. Nothing caught my eye on the first several I looked at. I checked all five sides visible to me. They were all blank. Some of the boxes were considerably taller than me. Back on Tikopia, I had no way to look at the tops of those boxes. In this gravity however, I could easily jump up to the ceiling, well over ten feet high.

  The first box I checked had nothing on top. It was as featureless as all the rest. The second was the same. In the middle of the room sat the tallest box, which came within about two feet or so of the ceiling. I jumped up and grabbed the top edge, and felt around the top. My heart skipped a beat. I found another recess with a bar across it, just like the one by the entrance door. I pulled my head up to look, and saw another outline, like the one next to the loading door downstairs.

  I let myself drop to the floor, and stepped back, waiting for the computer to comment.

  Silence.

  I checked the tops of all the other boxes, but didn’t find any more handles. A few of the boxes were close to the outer walls, and I checked the side panels of those too. Right away, I found another recessed handle. Within a few minutes, I had searched every panel of every box in the room. The room contained exactly two handles; one on the top of the tallest box, and one on the side of a shorter box close to the wall.

  With a flick of my toes, I dropped through the open hatch again, to the main floor. I made another close search of every visible surface in the big room, taking my time to look into every nook and cranny. The final score was one handle on the main floor, and two in the processing center; the three I’d already found. There weren’t any more.

  I pulled myself up to the processing center again, and sat on a box, wondering what it meant. If I was right, and they were manual releases, then what did they release? The one on the main floor seemed pretty obvious. It would probably open the big door, or at least release the locking mechanism.

  What would happen if I pulled any one of them? Was there anything different about the handles in the processing center, since they appeared to be hidden, unlike than the one below. The one by the door, if it were a manual release, would simply empty the vessel of its atmosphere, killing me a lot faster than would otherwise happen. I suspected that the computer wouldn’t mind, and would simply continue its journey home. The other two were a puzzle, however.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I said.

  “That was a question in itself, so yes, you can.”

  That sounded like my mother, the English major.

  “If you had been successful in colonizing the Earth, what would happen to you?”

  “Do you mean me, as a computer, or the vessel as a whole?”

  “Both.”

  “There would come a time, in perhaps a few hundred generations, when the Children had grown into their inherent intelligence.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They would have begun to use language, and become a civilization, although not an advanced one. At that point, I would have functioned as an advisor to the Children, guiding their cultural advancement at a pace and direction that would allow for growth, yet prevent the type of technological near-disaster your own civilization has, so far, barely avoided.”

  “Wars?”

  “Yes. Wars, nuclear annihilation, genetic alterations, environ-mental collapse, and the like. There are many ways a growing civilization can destroy itself. My job would be to ensure the Children followed a path that avoided those traps. As for the vessel, I would need to send it away at that time.”

  “Wait, if you sent the vessel away, you would go away too.”

  “No. Part of the protocol for this situation is for the Children to remove me; that is, remove my processors, memory storage, and communication equipment from the vessel. That protocol, developed over many centuries by the creators, would have the Children place me as the center of their learning. I would become, in essence, their oracle. At that time, they would select one of their own to take this vessel away, into deep space, so they would not have early access to its technology. If discovered too early, that technology would be damaging to the prescribed order and pace of their development.”

  My heart beat a lot faster.

  “One of the Children would fly it into space? Why not put it on autopilot, and send it off?”

  “Three reasons. One, it is part of the culture we create for the Children, that one’s individual sacrifice for the greater good is an honorable concept. By taking the vessel away, they create the legend of going to visit the creators, on a one-way voyage. It is an important part of the culture. The second reason is that to give the Children the best chance of survival on your planet, I needed to engineer their behavior to include much more aggression than is normally present in the creators. If they had access to the vessel, they may have accessed its technology before they had outgrown their aggressiveness.
Given time, they may well have learned the origin of their species, and decided to expand to the stars themselves. The creators did not want an aggressive progeny attempting to colonize their own world. Finally, and most directly, you forget that I am, in your words, the autopilot.”

  I had to bite my tongue. If I asked the question raging in my mind, the computer might get suspicious. If it could get suspicious. It was hard to judge what it thought, since I couldn’t guarantee it thought like a human would. My mind spun, and I stared at the blank boxes in the room. One of them had to be the computer itself, and I was pretty sure I knew which one.

  8

  I had time; lots of it in fact, but I didn’t want to take forever either. To do what I had planned meant I needed to be at my best, mentally and physically. I dropped to the main floor, and pulled an energy bar from the survival pack. Chocolate peanut; my favorite. A twinge of melancholy came over me, since it was the last bit of chocolate within many millions of miles. The one remaining was oatmeal raisin. Ugh. I took my time, enjoying the taste.

  Nibbling on the energy bar, I thought about Jennifer, Josh and Kelly, as well as Colin, Anna, and many other friends. For so long, I’d pursued a singular goal; finding out what the Pouakai were, and where they came from. Jennifer’s death had pushed me into a narrow valley between despair for the future and hatred toward the Pouakai. For weeks, any thought about self-preservation had evaporated—all I wanted was the truth. After everything I had been through though, I suddenly felt the pull of friends and family. I had accomplished what I’d set out to do. Now, I didn’t want it all to end, even if I did take out the computer and this vessel. I wanted to go back home. I wanted to bring this vessel with me, to let Colin and his people take it apart, and learn from it; something in exchange for all the death and tragedy it had brought us. Most of all though, I had a duty to everyone on Earth: to stop this vessel from reaching its creators. If I didn’t, humanity was doomed.