by Nick M Lloyd
An hour later, he was still pacing indiscriminately. He couldn’t settle. This time, he flicked on the television. His large wall-mounted flat-screen hummed to life, but the signal seemed to flicker and race; it appeared to be displaying two channels at the same time. He switched channels, and eventually the picture settled down, but Sunday morning television at 4am was not stimulating. Jack turned it off in disgust.
Another hour later Jack was still lying on his sofa, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. Am I going mad? Suddenly, he jumped up, threw on a coat and walked out of the front door. The clouds still remained, but the wind had died down. There was no noise. Silence. Stamping his feet to get the blood circulating, he walked down his driveway and on to the road. It was narrow, with no pavement and no lights. There was a faint drizzle, but it gave him no discomfort as it settled on his face. It was comforting, a gentle reminder of normality.
The drizzle turned to heavy rain and Jack walked faster. As he reached road junctions he took arbitrary left and right turns. He knew the area well, so there was no real chance of getting seriously lost.
After a while, Jack came to a larger road with street lighting. Most of the houses had lights coming from their downstairs rooms. 6am on a Sunday? Jack stopped outside one house, trying to discern if there was any activity. He wasn’t really interested; he just wanted to keep his mind distracted from the growing, gnawing fear. He’d been out of the house for a while now. He needed to keep his brain occupied, actively focused on something mundane. And what could be more mundane than a sleepy Sunday morning in a safe suburb of West London?
Nothing seemed to be happening in the house. The downstairs lights were on, but the curtains were shut and there were no tell-tale silhouettes for Jack to interpret. About to move off, his eye was caught by a flash of colour. Through a small gap in the curtains, he saw a definite movement in the front room.
He decided to take a closer look. He crept up the driveway to the front room window. Through the gap in the curtains he could see a man wandering around half dressed, attempting to squeeze into a set of yellow cycling gear, while his television pumped out some generic Sunday morning programme. The man was fully engrossed in putting his cycling shorts on; Jack kept at the window—just watching, feeling reassured by the normality of the scene.
But, clearly, Jack watching a complete stranger getting dressed at 6am was not normal and, when a rumble of thunder made the man look up, Shit! He ran.
A few moments later the door to the house opened and he heard a shout. ‘Bloody pervert!’ And then much louder. ‘Bloody pervert!’ More lights started going on at other houses. Windows opened. Shouts of ‘What’s going on?’ reverberated up and down the street.
Back on the pavement, Jack looked around; the street lamps were still bright and illuminating him. Can’t stop to explain. He ran up the road. He could hear the prelude to a hunt behind him: doors opening, shouted exchanges. He dreaded the sound of a car starting, but it hadn’t come yet. Another shout from behind him. ‘There! On the pavement. Heading toward Farmely.’
Looking around again, Jack noticed the streetlamps were giving away his position. Damn those lights! He looked ahead; it was about 100 metres to the end of the street and into the comparative safety of some darkened lanes. He needed it to be darker. He had to be in darkness so they wouldn’t see him.
With 50 metres to go, Jack heard a car engine starting. Shit! He turned back to look and, at the far end of the street, he could see the car pulling out of a driveway. A few houses down there were two men seemingly waiting at the side of the road. One of the men looked up, straight into Jack’s eyes.
Jack looked at the street lights giving him away; suddenly, they went out—all of them. There was confusion as the men waiting for the car suddenly couldn’t see much at all, and they certainly couldn’t see him. Within a heartbeat, he had doubled his speed and made it to the end of the street. He threw himself sideways into the bushes and lay, panting, in the comparative safety of darkness.
Seconds later, the car drove past Jack’s hiding place without stopping; they hadn’t seen him jump off the road. The car followed the main street and disappeared from sight. Jack lay on his back. His legs and feet were painful, and his chest was tight. He breathed heavily, waiting.
The rain was constant, and he was soaked to the skin; but he felt safe. His breathing returned to normal quickly, and the muscle ache in his legs disappeared. He looked for signs of the returning car, or other pursuit. There was none.
All the streetlamps were still off when Jack crawled out from the bush. There was a small amount of light coming from some of the houses, but nothing much. Sensing noises in the far distance, he retreated to his hiding spot. Minutes later the car returned, stopping at the end of the street, where all the men got out. Jack stood up quietly and made his way back up the road, back to his home.
At home, he went into the bedroom to change out of his drenched clothes. Looking down at his legs, he could see one of his socks was soaked, but with what appeared to be blood. Jack inspected his legs, and there was a reasonably deep gash in his calf. He had a closer look, but the blood was only gently seeping out of it. Jack was amazed and concerned. The wound looked deep but also it looked a few days old. He shook his head. That’s not right.
Grainy pictures from the night walk were beamed into the Gadium crew room. The house was set up with multiple mini-bots providing image overlay and reinforcement so, although the images of the outside chase were poor, footage of Jack around his home could be seen quite clearly.
Justio watched Jack inspect his legs and then followed the intermittent conversation Jack had with himself. There wasn’t much to go on, but Justio could tell Jack was only just holding on to his sanity.
Although Justio still had many options, time was running out. Aytch had made a formal vault-recording of the decision not to progress a Full Emergence. It was technically a good decision from Aytch, but not one Justio would have expected Aytch to make unilaterally. Aytch was growing in confidence, and this would only become more and more restrictive for him.
Justio reviewed his contingencies. Aytch would not sanction Jack Bullage’s removal, so the obvious next step was to kill Jack surreptitiously—set Earth on a path to a Full Emergence. A Full Emergence that Earth would not successfully negotiate.
But Justio had to move fast. Judging from experience on other planets, it could be that Jack Bullage was only a week away from becoming fully aware, after which it would be very difficult to kill him secretly—Aytch couldn’t be allowed to find out about Justio’s hand in the matter.
And there was always a back-up; use the threat of Jack becoming a Despot as a means to get Aytch to agree to a purge.
Justio smiled. He had plenty of options; but it had to be made to look as though a genuine, well-intentioned Gadium intervention went wrong through mismanagement. Time to intensify the manipulation.
Chapter 28
Aytch sat in the crew room reviewing materials from the previous 48 hours, his exam revision forgotten for the moment. There were real-time feeds from Louise Harding’s house, but nothing much of substance seemed to be happening. Both Louise and Jeff seemed to be working at their kitchen table, but the voice feeds were not effective and Aytch couldn’t make out what they were saying. Once the mini-bots infiltrate their laptops we’ll be have all the data.
Aytch had inferred the gist of the proposed test structure from snippets of conversations he had captured, and from hand-drawn diagrams observable on the Hardings’ kitchen table. The tests seemed to be well short of the structure required to get results. However, the next time Jeff went to Mike’s garage he would be couriering some mini-bots specifically to cover the tests.
At Jack Bullage’s house, it was a different matter. The data from Jack’s was not comprehensive, but it seemed likely he was a Triple Alpha. He must have spontaneously converted during the crash. On the positive side, assuming it was true, then, as a Triple Alpha, Jac
k would be suppressing further Alpha Emergence—Earth was not ready for Emergence.
Justio walked in, sat down and looked up the screens. There was a video showing Jack appearing to shut down the street lights, and some footage of the aftermath of Jack’s probable subconscious self-healing of his leg.
Aytch stood up and started to pace around. ‘The extraction process must be run before he becomes self-aware.’
‘And without Earth finding out about us.’ Justio waited for a moment. ‘You haven’t changed your mind about a Full Emergence?’
Aytch was silent for a while. He’d got another QET from Sharnia, intimating things were tough at the GEC—a good news story would be a real boost. He wavered. ‘Can we leave the final decision for a few days?’
Nodding, Justio stood. ‘Sure, we’ve got a few weeks before Jack is likely to become self-aware; he’ll probably follow the standard lifecycle. He’ll worry that he is going mad well before he wonders if he is developing superpowers.’
‘So, the extraction plan.’ Aytch displayed the various safe corridors in the airspace.
Justio looked up at the data on the walls. ‘There’s no mad rush. We take him in about a week. In the meantime, we’ll just keep a watchful eye.’
‘During which G60 finishes their investigation, which will lead them to a null test result from Louise Harding.’
‘Exactly, everyone finishes what they’re doing, with no positive results or leads.’
Aytch went back to his cabin and, once it was decrypted and enriched, reviewed the most recent QET message from Sharnia.
GEC issues remain. GF are up to something, I sense them everywhere. AI question may get traction. Think about it. Its time is coming again. Keep an eye on Justio, he has complicated history—Darth and Marhok.
Darth and Marhok? Pulling out his communications tablet, Aytch opened his Grandmother Sharnia’s archive. Nothing on Marhok, but he found a file with a reference to Sharnia’s Darth investigation. He accessed the video and set it running. It was from about 20,000 years previously. Aytch watched a close up of Sharnia’s face looking tired. Sharnia spoke slowly.
‘Not a great few months. I was ordered to perform a full investigation of the Despot disaster on Darth, whose inhabitants are now condemned to a lengthy quarantine.
I’ve reviewed the mission notes and questioned the three Gadium participants. They all behaved absolutely correctly. Additionally, they all have perfectly clean records, with the exception of Commander Justio who had some personal issues a long time ago.
Speaking to Commander Hunla about Commander Justio, she was convinced he’d suffered full animustosis…total soul death…on Marhok.’
Aytch thought for few moments. This was from a period of time when GF activity had been either totally absent or not attributed. So Sharnia had been working in a position of very low suspicion. Not like now…
Aytch looked for a follow-up on the subject but there was nothing. It wasn’t unusual; although computer memory was almost infinite, all Gadiums were quite frugal when it came to creating records, as it was all too easy to end up recording your whole life. Then, as well as your descendants looking upon you as a self-absorbed narcissus, they were also left with data which was unsearchable, because of the severe restrictions of Gadium usage of computer search capability.
He hunted around, but there were no more entries tagged with Justio’s name. He spent a few more minutes flicking through other files. Nothing caught his attention.
Sharnia watched as the Chairwoman swept into the GEC meeting, passing the Deputy Chairman without acknowledging him.
As she sat down next to Sharnia she leaned across and whispered. ‘My source has confirmed Rolumpus was instigated by GF agents. We think we know where they are.’
Sharnia nodded her receipt of the message and then stared out towards the meeting’s attendees.
Next to her, the Chairwoman gathered her thoughts and then stood, addressing the meeting. ‘Fellow Gadiums, we’ve had an ultimatum from the Rolumpus sector. They have demanded we give them unfettered access to a volume of space about 50 light years’ radius centred on their main home planet.’
There were rumbles of disapproval around the room and a few half-whispered threats. The Chairwoman let the committee rumble on for a few moments then raised her hands. ‘Well, let’s hear the case of leniency. Delegate Smitter, I believe you think we should open up a dialogue with them.’
Smitter stood and bowed to the Chairwoman. ‘Madam Chairwoman, giving them a mere 50 light years’ range will only encompass a few dormant sentient species. I cannot see the harm.’
There was silence around the room. There were no signs of approval or support. Smitter looked around, trying to catch the eye of other committee members. Everyone looked away. Smitter turned to the head of the table. The Chairwoman looked down at her notes.
My turn. Sharnia stood up. She was a full metre taller than him and well over twice his weight—all muscle. Even from across the room, she loomed over Smitter, who, in fairness, was unnaturally small for a Gadium.
Sharnia took half a step towards Smitter, then stopped. Smitter sat down, struggling to get his breathing under control. Satisfied that he was subdued, Sharnia addressed the room. ‘These requests are on the increase, and are fed by GF insurgence, giving places like Rolumpus courage to take us on.’ She paused for a moment. ‘No deals. Ever. No concessions. Ever. No special cases. No investments in good will. No pragmatism.’
After briefly, but meaningfully, letting her gaze rest on Jenkins for a few heartbeats, Sharnia turned to the Deputy Chairman. ‘Mister Deputy, have you tabled a response?’
The Deputy Chairman looked to the Chairwoman for permission to speak. The Chairwoman gave a small nod and the Deputy addressed the committee. ‘We have real-time communications with the Gadium mission on Rolumpus. Our analysis shows about 30% of the Rolumpus wants secession, and the remainder would prefer to remain with us. A short, sharp shock will bring them back in line, with minimal risk of a protracted guerrilla war.’ He paused. ‘I must add that some of their intercepted communications indicate they are aggressively developing Artificial Intelligence.’
The Chairwoman leant forward and gazed intently at the Deputy. ‘What’s your definition of a short, sharp shock?’
‘We have embassies located in all major cities on their home planet. Each one has a high grade plasma bomb concealed inside. We detonate three or four of them, causing a few million deaths. Additionally, we destroy all of their ships. As you know, we provided them with their star-drives and, as per usual, we added a little something to each one for this eventuality.’
There was a murmur around the table. This was a little more severe than the standard response to species secession demands. Smitter stood up. ‘How can we know they don’t have all these devices under their own observation? How can we know they don’t have AI capability to over-run us?’
The Chairwoman raised her hand. ‘Smitter, much as I admire your judgement and guidance, this is not a time for leniency. The Rolumpus may think we have softened, we have changed. We have not.’ The Chairwoman looked around the table. ‘Votes in favour of a military response?’
Watching Jenkins, Sharnia noticed him flinch, ever so slightly, but milliseconds later his usual military face was back in place.
Meanwhile the vote went on. Sufficient hands went up. The Chairwoman stood. ‘The motion is passed. However, as the Chief of the Executive, I reserve the right to use my judgement in the choice of targets, on the basis that the extent of the damage is similar to that proposed by the Deputy.’
Councilman Smitter raised a hand. ‘Madam Chairwoman, can you tell us the targets?’
The Chairwoman smiled, all teeth, her voice dripping with menace. ‘Why, councilman, do you have any friends in the Rolumpus Sector that you would like to warn?’
Back in her offices, Sharnia reviewed the evidence she had been accruing against the GF movement. S
he had a strong ally in the Deputy Chairman, but was resolutely against his occasional intimation that the Chairwoman was a secret sympathiser. No, he doesn’t know her like I know her.
As for Jenkins, the Deputy had never really pointed a finger at him, but neither had he leapt to his defence when she’d laid out some of her concerns. And Jenkins had reacted to the Chairwoman taking executive control of the Rolumpus targeting.
Sharnia turned her attention fully back to the reports on her desk, and quickly let out a growl of frustration; the data aggregation and analysis was a nightmare—too much data and no sensible analysis. They were going to need to harness some limited AI capability to bring the galaxy to heel.
It had been a well-established fact within Gadium culture for half a million years that using AI brought in a large unknown element. Sharnia grimaced. When you’re already the de facto ruler of the Galaxy, then unknown is bad.
Her personal communications tablet lay on her desk. She unlocked it and looked at the last QET message she’d sent to Aytch. Yes, Justio had acted correctly on Darth, but Hunla had seen first-hand Justio’s rage many years before, on Marhok.
Personal Log—Commander Hunla
I felt the slash of claws across my face. Although it was only a feeble strike, it still drew gouges into my skin. I tightened my own fingers around the wretch’s neck and lifted him off the ground with one hand.
I said, ‘She’s dead, Commander. You have your job to do here.’
I released my grip, and Commander Justio slumped to the ground in front of me, struggling to regain his breath. His wife Graxa was dead. Dead to him. Not in stasis back on Gadium. Old. Old and dying. Great grandchildren all around her bedside.