Human Phase

by J. S. Morin

  Kaylee crossed her arms.

  “Are… you going to say anything? Is this one of those ‘I’m waiting for something specific’ silences?”

  She nodded.

  “I, uh, I’ll be really careful, stop going behind your back, and I’ll never do it again?” he guessed.

  Kaylee threw her arms around him and squeezed. Their heads nestled side by side as she clung on tight enough to crush the air from his lungs. She whispered, “You don’t get to be brave and selfless without me.”

  Alan choked for breath. When he managed to speak, it was a croak. “You’re… not going to try to stop me?”

  “I want to pack you in a suitcase and drag you back to Earth. I want to lock you up and walk you on a leash to class every day and never let you out of my sight again. I want to grow old with you—old like Grannie Eve. I want us to be two shriveled old raisins sitting on a couch side by side with our creaky old cybernetic brains plugged together by a wire, sharing corny jokes that no one else can hear. But I can’t have a quiet, easy life back on Earth knowing that I abandoned Mars to people like Ned. We will make our home here, and we’ll make it the kind of place where we can raise ten more kids if we decide to.”

  Alan gasped. “Ten?”

  “Let’s worry about them one at a time,” Kaylee said, pulling Alan down atop her and working at the buttons on his pants.

  Chapter Twenty

  On her first day out of the hospital, Eve found herself—against doctor’s advice—at the Human Welfare Committee offices in Philadelphia. Her breath wheezed from tired old lungs as Ashley390 and her cohorts struggled to come up with a workable alternative to the three-week convalescence the current solution demanded. Eve didn’t know how many weeks she had left in the rest of her; she damned well wasn’t going to spend three of them coddling two sacks of alveoli that were lying down on the job.

  The day’s agenda held all the usual fluff of grievances and squabbles among the committees that dealt with human clients. Humans wanted the committee to intercede to get them more varied foods, a new house, a pet elephant, a skyro of their own design—requests that had already been turned down by the appropriate governing authorities. Eve rejected them all once more, in no mood for the bickering it would take to get intransigent committees to give ungrateful humans what they were after.

  A resolution easing the Emancipation Board’s guidelines came up for a vote. Eve joined the heavy majority in rejecting it. The last thing either world needed was more underprepared humans out on their own. Eve found herself more and more often being a minority vote against a particular emancipation. Lazy, entitled brats were getting turned loose on an unsuspecting community at an ever-increasing rate.

  Eve coughed, and the room fell instantly silent. “I’m fine,” she snapped. Her voice was a gravelly travesty after having a breathing tube shoved down her throat for a week. “Carry on. You’re all tippy-toeing around the major issue of the day.”

  Jennifer81 was the first to finally speak. “We’re fielding upward of a hundred queries a day about the Martian Riot.”

  Eve crinkled her nose. “Stop calling it that, for starters. A bunch of chemically numbed sports fanatics ran onto the field of play. Only five participated in actual wrongdoing.”

  “What should we call it, then?” Eddie130 asked.

  “An attack on the person of Brent104.”

  “And… what are we doing about it?” Jennifer81 pressed. “The public wants to know. The Earth-bound community is looking for reassurance that we’ve got the Mars situation under control. The Martians are collectively cringing, fearing reprisal.”

  Eve beckoned with one frail-boned hand to the corner of the room. “Charlie7, come make your report.”

  The matte-black Version 70.2 chassis of Charlie7 was like a pillar that supported the shadows clinging to the chamber’s corners. He carried a headsman’s pall as he parted the spectators on his way to the guest lectern.

  “Thank you for inviting me, Madame Chairwoman,” Charlie7 said formally. “The Mars Situation, as you call it, is fine. It’s a frontier colony, such as it is in these times. While as a society, we have embraced lawlessness in the past, this particular incident happens to fall into an unfortunate gray void in committee mandates. The Human Welfare Committee has no guidance on humans harming—or attempting to harm—robots with their bare hands. None of the robo-centric committees are empowered to discipline humans. If the assailants had attempted to use an EMP rifle or a cutting torch, we’d be having a different conversation. As it stands…” Charlie7 spread his hands.

  “Yes,” Jennifer81 said with a huff. “We know the legal loophole. There’s a vote next week on the matter of closing it up. What do we do about the underlying, festering sore of Martian discontent?”

  “Ban soccer?” Charlie7 replied flippantly, drawing cries of outrage at his casual dismissal of a serious issue. “I’ll admit it’s personal bias; I’ve never cared for the game. But what could we do? Round up malcontents? That’d make things so much better on Mars. We’d have to have another roundup of the malcontents that action would create, resulting in a positive reinforcement loop that would have us rounding up the entire colony.”

  “We need a real answer,” Eddie130 said, “not your foolish jokes.”

  “Send them a transorbital and a Truman-Effect Reactor,” Charlie7 said, throwing up his hands.

  Jennifer81 scowled. “But that could delay the rollout of the Version 92 chassis b—”

  “Out of order,” Eve bellowed—or tried, at least. The attempt at speaking over Jennifer81 set off another brief coughing fit. Everyone waited in silence for her to recover. “This is a Human Welfare Committee meeting. Kanto’s issues are Kanto’s problem. If the discontent on Mars is a function of resource shortages, it’s our duty to address the issue. All in favor of interceding with the Solar Mining Committee and the Advanced Scientific Development Committee on behalf of the Martian colonists?”

  Eve cast her glare around the table. She didn’t have as many words left in her lungs as she might like, but she could let a well-practiced glare remind all the voting members of where their duty lay. Jennifer81 in particular looked rather circuit-bare in her old Version 59.10 chassis. But this wasn’t a committee to play politics with her own chassis needs.

  By a vote of ten to five, the Human Welfare Committee agreed to have a chat with Solar Mining and Advanced Scientific Development about giving Mars a little room to breathe.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ned and his four closest friends ambled down a dark maintenance tunnel in the Curiosity colony’s transorbital station. That late-night arrival had been a letdown. It was right on schedule, which meant that it wasn’t an apology shipment from Earth giving back the ores needed to resume construction at Site-2. This was an ice shipment, necessary in the long run for sustaining a water supply on the surface, but a shabby sight compared to what they needed—and had been promised.

  “Think maybe we give the Earthlings a chance to come through?” Wil asked from the back of the single-file row as they slunk through the bowels of the facility. “I read the transcripts. They’re trying to get us our shipment. The old lady’s putting her weight behind this one.”

  “Nah,” Ned said without turning back. “You can’t plan for what-ifs. For what it’s worth, I hope she tears those Solar Mining rock-brains a new input port. But the old hag’s barely hanging on. She hasn’t got much in her, and I doubt she’s got what it takes to force those clamp-fisted bastards to cough up our ore. Plus, the reactor’s where we’ve got the real need. It’ll be six months before another one’s up for grabs. Nah, we stick to the plan.”

  “I’m still not sure I like this one,” Calvin grumbled.

  “No backing out now,” Les replied firmly.

  The clomp of their boots on the steel-grated floor echoed in the darkness. It didn’t matter if the ship’s crew heard them or not. Nobody would suspect anything. Ned had their alibis locked up tight if anyone bothered to ask.<
br />
  They all had business with the transorbital pilots. If the Mars Terraforming Initiative couldn’t get answers from Earth on when they might expect ore, they’d get the real lowdown from the crews themselves. That was all. A nice chat.

  The tools were for just in case. If they spotted a system that needed tweaking along the way, Ned and his four friends would be happy to lend a hand.

  “We in range yet?” Ned asked.

  “Almost,” Gregor said, staring at a geolocator beacon in his hands.

  “We start that thing, we’ll have a hell of a time if they catch us,” Wil warned.

  “In range,” Gregor reported. “Just say the word.”

  “Hit it,” Ned replied without hesitation.

  Gregor tapped a command on his portable. Visibly, nothing happened.

  “We covered?” Ned asked.

  Les had his portable out. “No signal. We’re good.”

  Solar flares rarely affected Mars, but there were still oddities of the planet’s artificially induced magnetosphere that weren’t fully understood. Communications blips happened. Sometimes, the few local scientists interested in those sorts of things discovered a cause. More often, everyone just thanked God that the colony life support didn’t go out and moved on with their lives.

  Tonight, Ned was expecting the rest of the colony to just move on.

  “Let’s move.”

  The quintet quickened their pace and stormed through the maintenance underbelly of the transorbital dock. Heavy automated equipment rumbled overhead on pre-programmed routes, hauling the load off a ship larger than the colony itself. Ice would be offloaded into the melting fields. The runoff would pour down canals and off to the arboreal preserves—though “arboreal” was more like algae at this point. It’d be days before the load was fully emptied.

  There he was. James98, captain of Mining Vessel 30, was ambling by overhead. Ned shifted his course and headed for the nearest stairwell.

  Les, Calvin, Gregor, and Wil hustled along behind him.

  “James?” Ned called out as the robot walked in the other direction.

  James98 stopped and turned. The orange glows of two robotic optical sensors shrunk to pinpoints before widening to normal view. “Ned Lund? To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Any robot who claimed it was a pleasure to talk with Ned was either willfully ignorant or throwing sass in his direction. He suspected the latter.

  “Listen, I know this isn’t your department,” Ned called out, lowering his voice incrementally from a shout as he drew near. “But I’ve got a project to run here, and I’m not getting anything but committee double-speak whenever I try to get a straight answer about when I can expect to see an ore shipment this way.”

  As Ned pulled short an arm’s length from the robotic pilot in his durable, space-worn coveralls, his men fanned out in a semi-circle, hemming the robot in.

  James98 didn’t appear the least bit concerned with the proximity of the terraformers. The robot gave a simple shrug. “I don’t know what you’re hoping to get out of me. The next nearest ship to mine was farther from me than we are from the sun right now. It’s not like we’re out there scooping up ice and minerals eight hours a day, then swooping over to a bar for happy hour. Even laser communication has a lag that gets to be minutes long.”

  “Yeah,” Ned persisted, burying himself deeper in the robot’s attention. “But you must exchange cargoes once in a while. You can’t just ignore ore you find, same as Vessel 87 can’t pass up huge collections of ice crystals.”

  James98 wobbled his head back and forth in annoyance. “Once in a while, sure. Not often. And we don’t get to set delivery policy, regardless. We just—what are you doing?”

  The sizzle of the plasma torch cut out as quickly as it had started. Ned shielded his eyes against the sting of the glare reflected off Calvin’s auto-dim goggles.

  “Get his arms,” Ned ordered, taking James98 by the ankles as the uncontrolled robot teetered.

  Gregor and Wil complied. Les came over and took one of the ankles as Ned gratefully passed along the weight.

  “Thank God for these lightweight, low-energy models,” Wil said under his breath.

  “What’s going on?” James98 demanded. “Where are you taking me? Ned? Whatever you’re planning, reconsider.”

  “I’m done reconsidering things,” Ned replied brusquely as he waddled back for the stairs with his limp load. “And I’d conserve power if I were you. Cal, here just severed every connection in your spine. Data, motor control, and, yes, power.”

  “Why?” James98 asked, as if the question were the last he might bother with as he clung to what little charge his skull kept locally.

  Ned grunted. “Nothing personal. Just politics.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The alarm feature on Alan’s portable was calibrated to his brainwaves. A school friend from his emancipation class had been working on it experimentally and had developed selective couples alarms. Kaylee’s rarely woke Alan, and Alan’s pretty much never disturbed Kaylee. A particular mixture of innocuous, rhythmic noises caught in his brain and broke his sleep pattern just long enough for him to wake up and shut off the sound.

  He had a text message. It was Ned Lund.

  GET DRESSED. MEET NOW. YOU’VE GOT 15 MINUTES TO GET TO AIRLOCK 4.

  Alan’s heart raced.

  A meter away, Kaylee snored.

  The clock read 2:13 AM, Curiosity Standard Time.

  This was it. They were bringing him in on something clandestine. His fingers shook as he searched the floor for the pants he’d discarded at bedtime. For once, his habit of ignoring the clothes processor was paying off.

  Fully dressed in yesterday’s attire, he tiptoed for the door before a pang of conscience stopped him short. Still creeping quietly through the bedroom, he leaned down and kissed Kaylee on the forehead.

  She stirred and rolled onto her side.

  “Honey, I have to go,” Alan whispered, brushing aside a lock of hair that had fallen across her eye. With a groggy blink, that eye opened. “Spy stuff. Be back soon as I can.”

  “Be careful,” Kaylee mumbled—or something close. It was hard to tell with her sleep-slurred speech.

  Alan kissed her on the lips. She kissed back in a reflex honed over a decade and a half of marriage.

  An instant later, he was gone.

  The air in the common “outdoor” areas of the colony had never had that Earthy freshness to it. But he breathed deep of the microbially filtered air and felt free. A nervous jitter shook his shoulders. This was it. He was going to get a peek behind the curtain of the Martian resistance movement.

  Airlock 4 wasn’t far. But neither was fifteen minutes a long time. Alan referenced his portable on the way, checking to see when Ned had sent his message. Six minutes. He had nine left.

  Alan set a brisk pace, wondering idly if there were hidden security camera monitoring the common areas. If he were to be fully inducted into the brotherhood of the Chain Breakers, he supposed he might have to learn that.

  By the time he reached the airlock, Alan was breathing heavily. He hadn’t quite jogged the kilometer or so from his apartment, but he wasn’t exactly accustomed to long treks in such a short time frame.

  Ned met him by the airlock door. “Got your breather?”

  Alan blinked. “I, uh… don’t have one.”

  Ned revealed a breather and goggles he’d been concealing behind his back. “Figured you’d forget. Here. And for future reference, you could have swiped your wife’s. You’d have been back in plenty of time.”

  Kaylee’s breather? It would sooner have occurred to him to borrow her underwear than her filtration mask. The former was just a frillier sort of undergarment. The latter was a lifesaving device she used every day of her professional life.

  Ned’s breather was already dangling around his neck. With a practiced tug and a flip, he had his on the instant the airlock door closed them in. Alan fumbled his borrowed set on, and Ned sta
rted the cycle.

  Air rushed around them, exchanging colony air for the dead, wispy substance that passed for an atmosphere outside. Alan’s ears popped. The outdoors was marginally lower pressure than inside. At least the terraforming efforts had gotten as far as building up the atmosphere’s bulk if not its oxygen levels. Otherwise, they’d have needed full space suits to venture outside.

  When the outer door opened, a bone-chilling wind greeted them. It was nighttime on Mars, and the greenhouse gasses weren’t thick enough to trap the solar radiation from the daytime hours.

  “Heavy coat, next time too,” Ned warned, voice hollow behind his mask.

  Alan nodded spasmodically, teeth already chattering.

  It was warmer inside the rover. Alan didn’t ask where they were headed but recognized their course from the previous visit to Mars Terraforming Initiative Site-2.

  Questions boiled and churned in Alan’s mind. He wanted to seem eager, willing, loyal to the cause. But this seemed like the kind of cause that preferred the back row students to the ones who sat up front and raised their hand at every question from the teacher.

  Neither man spoke a word the whole drive out.

  When the rover came to a halt, Alan and Ned got out and headed for the terraforming base camp’s airlock. The process of exchanging Martian for science-cleansed air reversed, and the two of them trudged inside, stripping off their masks.

  Luckily for Alan, the mask muffled his gasp of shock and horror.

  “Who’s that?” he dared to ask. There was a robot—Version 61 chassis if he wasn’t mistaken—lying on the cafeteria table wearing a spacer’s coveralls.

  “James98,” the robot said quietly. His optical sensors weren’t even active. “Help me.”

  “Shaddup,” Les said and slapped the robot across the face with a glove. He turned to Alan. “Don’t mind him. He’s just a prop. You’re the guest of honor.”