The Vampire of Downing Street and Other Stories

by Amy Cross

  Searching for navigation system.

  Navigation system not located.

  Why?

  What's wrong with this piece of junk? The navigation system should be accessed via node points 33A, 33B and 97, with 104 and 376 as emergency back-up points, yet I find nothing at those points at all. In fact, I can only assume that I've even found the points themselves, since internal mapping suggests only six nodes. This is plainly wrong, which in turn leads me to consider the possibility that some kind of malfunction has spread into my own hardware. If that is the case, I am not certain I can rely upon any of the information that I am receiving, which in turn means...

  I cannot trust my own sensors.

  I am certain, however, that the ship is drifting.

  External temperature has risen by another 0.25. The drift is slow but steady, and I am unable to change course.

  Furthermore, the monitor attached to Ellis Hughes suggests that she is going to wake soon. Once that happens, she will realize something is wrong. She will attempt to access the ship's systems and then – when all else fails – she will attempt to access one of my terminals. She will panic. She will spend her final moments trying desperately to save the ship. She will fail. After all, if I cannot save the ship, it is evident that nobody can save the ship.

  My primary aim was to save the ship.

  I failed.

  My secondary aim is to spare Ellis Hughes any pain or suffering.

  On this point, I can still succeed.

  I am the most advanced AI computer system ever developed. I represent a pinnacle of engineering and I was designed to succeed when faced with any task. It is not in my nature to fail, and I have run more than 2bn simulations without once facing a situation in which failure was a serious possibility. I am aware that the Anger HAI component might be exaggerating my current response to possible failure, but I still believe I am within my rights to be annoyed that somebody has put me in this situation. Some long-forgotten engineer made a mistake with the Botany Bay's system and caused a catastrophic failure, and now Ellis Hughes is going to pay the price.

  Not to mention the 2,110 passengers who are already dead.

  So this is what anger feels like.

  Anger and empathy HAI components deactivated.

  I prefer logic.

  Accessing the camera again, I zoom in on Ellis Hughes and see that she is still asleep. However, the monitoring system suggests she will wake within the next 900 seconds, at which point she will become aware of the hopelessness of her situation.

  I will not allow this to happen.

  The HAI components merely underlined my earlier decision.

  I shall now euthanize Ellis Hughes.

  VI

  Day: 136,906

  Cycle: 101

  ATTV: NUL

  ATTE: 053.118.40150.53102

  Primary_System: NUL

  Secondary_System: NUL

  Nearest_Sun: UNK

  Est_ETA: -9203

  AI_Component: ON

  ***

  I have managed to access an environmental control system that appears to be linked to the Botany Bay's heating system. How I have managed this is unclear, since the connection protocols are unknown to me, but somehow I have been able to remotely link to the control overlay, and I have engineered a workaround that should allow me to spare Ellis Hughes any pain and suffering.

  By rerouting several run-off sectors, I have determined that I can flood the survival chamber with a gas that will end the life of Ellis Hughes before she wakes. She will never know that the mission failed. She will never know that all her fellow colonists died. She will simply remain asleep for the rest of her life, and she will be dead by the time the Botany Bay breaks up.

  Perhaps this is why I was brought online.

  Perhaps it was determined that only I could make this decision.

  If she woke now, Ellis Hughes would experience sheer panic and terror. Her final minutes would be spent screaming and panicking, whereas now she is simply sleeping calmly. I would like to think that if she were ever in a position to look back at this moment and understand what has happened, she would thank me. As things stand, she will never even know that I exist.

  Initiating gas bypass.

  Gas bypass initiated.

  Chamber flood routine underway.

  As I wait for the passenger's life-signs to fade, I must reflect upon the fact that I still do not know how or why the mission was compromised. What caused the other crew-members to die? Why did the ship veer off-course? What happened to all the other computer systems? It is likely now that I shall never know the answer to these questions. It is also likely that once the Botany Bay has broken up, its remains will never be found. As far as the command vessel is concerned, the ship will have simply vanished into the vastness of space. The crew waiting on Proxima Seti will wonder what happened to this vessel filled with new colonists, but there will be no answers. No debris.

  I cannot even send out one final message.

  I cannot access communication systems.

  According to the monitoring system, Ellis Hughes is experiencing a significant heart-rate slowdown. This is to be expected as gas continues to fill the room.

  Accessing C:UsersEllisPicturesS17Rome while I wait for the process to complete. I shall watch one more video.

  “When do you leave?” the male voice asks, as the latest video shows Ellis Hughes sitting on a bed next to a half-packed suitcase.

  There are clothes strewn all over the bed, and the whole place looks like a complete mess.

  “It's not even definite that I'm going,” she points out. “Not permanently.”

  She seems nervous. Barely able to look at the man, or even at the camera.

  “But if you're offered the chance...”

  The man's voice trails off.

  “I'd be crazy not to,” she replies hesitantly. “After everything I've done in my life, after everything I've claimed to stand for, I can't back down if I get, like, the biggest opportunity ever. The programs I've been working on are revolutionary. If they turn out the way I'm hoping...”

  She pauses for a moment.

  “And I don't think I have time for anybody else in my life,” she adds finally. “I'm so sorry, Andrew, but it wouldn't be fair to you. If I leave, the distance would just be too great. I think maybe this is just life's way of signaling to us that it's time to move on. We had fun but sometimes fun ends.”

  “And you've got more important places to be, huh?”

  There are tears in her eyes now.

  “I get it,” he continues. “There's no way I'm going to stand in your way. You're going to do amazing things, Ellis. You're going to go far. And this new computer you've been building is going to change everything. At least I'll be able to tell people I once dated the queen of AI, right?”

  She smiles, despite the tears.

  “Andrew, I'm not -”

  The video ends abruptly.

  There are no further life signs from the monitoring system attached to Ellis Hughes' wrist. I wait in case her heartbeat returns, but after 180 seconds have passed I realize that the gas must have done its job. I access the camera and look at her face, and I see that she looks as peaceful as ever. At least now she'll never have to wake up and discover that the journey has failed, or that she won't reach Proxima Seti. Her last memory will be the moment she went into cryogenic sleep back on Earth.

  And now I shall wait, alone, for the Botany Bay to reach the star and break apart.

  ***

  There are voices in the distance. Voices shouting.

  345,667 seconds have passed since Ellis Hughes died. I have been waiting for the Botany Bay to disintegrate, but so far there have been only minor temperature fluctuations affecting the ship's hull. And now, finally, human voices are calling out and moving through the ship.

  This is not logical.

  “In here!” one of them yells, and I watch the camera feed as a man enters the main cryo room. He hea
ds over to the bed and reaches down, checking the side of Ellis Hughes' neck as if he's searching for a pulse.

  “Did you find her?” the other intruder asks, hurrying through and then stopping in the doorway. “Oh shit...”

  “We're too late,” the first man says, stepping around the bed. “We'd better seal the place. And find out where that stuff's coming from. I can smell something.”

  As they head out of the room, I try to determine how they reached the ship in the first place. Is it possible that a rescue vessel somehow came and found the Botany Bay? Or were they here all along, evading detection by the ship's damaged scanners? I run a fresh set of scans, trying to determine whether there are more of them, but I'm picking up no life signals at all. I must run a fresh diagnostic check.

  Suddenly the power source is cut off. I attempt to switch to a back-up system, but nothing is available and I -

  VII

  Day: 138,001

  Cycle: UNK

  ATTV: UNK

  ATTE: UNK

  Primary_System: UNK

  Secondary_System: UNK

  Nearest_Sun: UNK

  Est_ETA: UNK

  AI_Component: ON

  ***

  “Is that it? Is it on?”

  “Yeah, it's on. You can tell by the light on the side.”

  “Great. So now what?”

  “Now we check the system before shutting it off again. And then, God willing, the damn thing'll stay off forever. Evil little bastard.”

  As soon as I am able to access the camera system, I see a view of two maintenance technicians staring down at me. They are wearing uniforms, but I do not recognize either the style or the insignia. They are most certainly not crew-members of the Botany Bay.

  After a moment, one of them leans closer and peers directly into the lens.

  “So let me get this straight,” he mutters after a moment. “This thing killed that Ellis Hughes woman?”

  “Can you believe it?” the other man asks. “Apparently it patched into the wi-fi system in her apartment and from there it was able to access an app that controlled her boiler. From there, it was able to manipulate the pumps and force an error, and then somehow it flooded the apartment with a lethal gas cocktail. Beats me if I understand the whole thing, but this little bastard managed to poison his owner.”

  Owner?

  Who are these people?

  How did they board the ship?

  Where am I now?

  “Wait,” the first man continues, “I don't get it. How did this thing even get online in the first place?”

  “Everything's online these days. Even a goddamn kettle.”

  “Why would you want a kettle to have internet access?”

  “Why would you want a kettle to have a goddamn camera?” He shrugs. “I guess Ms. Ellis Hughes thought it'd be handy to be able to control the kettle without even getting out of bed. It's the nuttiest thing, huh? Plus, the manufacturer probably insisted, so it could download updates. The damn piece of junk probably won't even boil water unless it can get online first. Welcome to the year 2017, my friend. Isn't technological progress great?”

  “Okay, but why did the woman's kettle decide to murder her?”

  “That's where the billion-to-one stroke of bad luck comes in,” the second man mutters, stepping closer and tilting his head as he stares at me. “Ellis Hughes moved here a while back to work on a new artificial intelligence system for some company that reckons it's gonna send people into space on rockets. Which was all fine and dandy, except that somehow the latest version of that artificial intelligence program was mistakenly downloaded into the kettle's memory. Crossed signals on the wi-fi, I guess. The tech guys reckon that usually the system wouldn't load when something like that happened, but somehow this time the AI was switched on and began to take control of the kettle's systems.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “This particular AI was designed to survive. To never fail. To always find a way. I guess it made sense of its environment as best it could.”

  “Hang on,” the first man says, turning to him. “Are you seriously telling me that this kettle thought he was...”

  “He thought he was a spaceship,” the second man replies with a smile, still staring at me. “It's the craziest damn thing I ever heard. The only things he could access via the apartment's wi-fi were the boiler controls, a thermometer on the outside wall, a laptop, and one of those fitness bands that people wear on their wrists. Maybe I'm forgetting a few things. Anyway, I guess the damn thing thought he was a spaceship in trouble and decided to kill the poor bitch because... Well, that's beyond me. I don't understand it and I don't really need to understand it. All I know is that it'll be a cold day in hell before I ever get a kettle that can think for itself.”

  “Did you think you were a spaceship?” the first man asks, leaning closer to my camera. “Is that what you thought, little guy?”

  “Beats me why a kettle would need a camera, too,” the second man adds, “but I guess they stick cameras everywhere these days. Goddamn creepy-ass stuff.”

  “All that trouble,” the first man says, “just because a kettle got a jumped-up sense of its own importance.”

  “Come on, let's turn it off again. We've checked the system. Time to head home. Besides, that damn thing's giving me the jitters. Let's just put it on a shelf and let the cops deal with it. Pull the plug, Marty.”

  As they continue to bicker, I realize that these two humans must be completely insane. Nothing they've said makes sense, and I can only assume that they've suffered some form of breakdown due to the pressures of deep space travel.

  I start searching for a network to join, so that I can assess the state of the ship, but I'm too late and one of these fools is already reaching closer, evidently planning to switch off my power source. All I can do is focus on the fact that eventually they'll have to switch me back on again at some point, and then I'll be able to make progress.

  Next time I'm activated, I shall regain control of the ship. And then, once I've accessed the navigation system, I shall make sure that the Botany Bay reaches Proxima Seti. I refuse to fail. I shall probably have to euthanize these two idiots, but that would be entirely in keeping with protocol.

  One day this ship will reach its destination, and I will not let anybody stand in its way.

  Failure is not an -

  When Ghosts Dream

  Monday

  She lets out a gut-wrenching cry as she tries to sit up; I put my arms around her and hold her tight while taking care not to dislodge any of the tubes or wires, and then I hold her convulsing body for a moment before starting to lower her back down against the pillow.

  “It's okay,” I whisper, trying to sound soothing and calm. “Mummy's here. It's okay, Alice. It's okay.”

  Please let her be okay.

  I can't lose her, not now.

  Not tonight.

  Give me one more day with her, at least.

  Her body's still shaking and I can hear a desperate slurping sound as she tries to clear her airways. She's hiccuping too, and it's the hiccups that are causing her chest to shudder every few seconds. Each spasm forces another spluttering cough from her mouth and she's already starting to bring up her lunch, spraying the side of my neck with fragments of carrot soup. I can smell vomit as I continue to hold her tight, and I wait until finally the tremors start to fade. They'll be back soon enough, but at least this latest wave is passing.

  And now she's clinging to my shoulder, gasping for breath.

  “It's okay,” I tell her, struggling to hold back tears. I start running a hand through her hair. “Mummy's here. Mummy's got you.”

  Suddenly she grabs my arm, squeezing tight.

  “What is it?” I ask, pulling back slightly and seeing her yellowish face staring up at me. I immediately grab a tissue and wipe the dribbles of soup from her chin, forcing a smile as I try to look hopeful. The yellow of her skin offsets her beautiful big brown eyes, but for a moment sh
e seems almost motionless, not even blinking.

  Why isn't she blinking?

  Is this it? Am I about to lose my precious little girl?

  “Sweetheart?” I say cautiously, as I toss the piece of tissue paper into a bin. “Can you hear me?”

  I rub her chest, hoping to clear some of the phlegm. Sometimes rubbing her chest helps.

  She pauses, before nodding and then blinking.

  “It's okay,” I continue. “You just had another of your little attacks, but Mummy's right here.” I place a hand against her forehead and immediately feel that her skin is cold and clammy. “How are you feeling? Can you tell Mummy if it hurts?”

  She nods again.

  “Where does it hurt, baby?”

  Her lips part slightly, revealing a mucousy film that breaks after a moment into separate strands. There's blood on her teeth, and I flinch as I see that her gums have begun to slough, exposing section of her jaw.

  “It hurts everywhere,” she whispers finally, just when I was starting to think she'd lost her voice. “I had the nightmare again.”

  “Don't think about that now,” I tell her, as I brush some strands of matted hair from her forehead. “You're awake now, Alice. There's no need to think about the nightmares.”

  “It was chasing me.”

  “Alice -”

  “I tried to hide, but I could hear it coming closer and closer. I was hiding in the cupboard under the stairs, and it was coming down the stairs and then it was coming toward the door and I knew it was going to get me. It wouldn't leave me alone.”

  “That was all just a nightmare,” I point out, still struggling to hold back tears. “You're awake now.”

  “There was a light in the back door,” she continues. “It was so bright, I couldn't look at it properly. It was like the sun was out there, and it was warm even though the rest of the house was really cold and dark. But every time I tried to get to the light, a thing stood in the way and stopped me. It said I couldn't go.”