“A stellated dodecahedron!”
The woman floating by Judy was speaking for the sake of it. She was very nervous, filling the space between herself and her approaching fear with words.
“That’s what you call the shape of this thing. They must have grown it just to house us. Whoever they are. Who do you think they are?”
“I don’t know,” replied Judy. She didn’t need Jesse’s MTPH-enhanced senses to tell her that the terrified passengers who were being poured into the enormous plastic bubble in which she floated were close to panic. They tumbled inexpertly in the zero-G space, gazing wide-eyed, through the clear plastic walls of the dodecahedron, at the stricken body of the Deborah lit up by nauseous green searchlights. A few last tiny bubbles were crossing through space, bringing the remaining humans to safety. Judy watched as one of the little bubbles touched the wall of envelope and discharged a tumbling passenger through its protective wall into safety.
—I reckon they’ve now saved about half of us, said Jesse.
“Who has?” asked Judy.
“Who has what?” asked the nervous woman. She looked around. “Who are you speaking to?”
“Never mind. Have you noticed that there are no facilities in here?” remarked Judy. “No beds, no toilets. Nothing. Just a lot of people floating in a great bubble.”
A voice rang out in the great space.
“Passengers of the Deborah .”
The floating passengers quietened immediately.
“This is the Free Enterprise —part of DIANA. We noted your distress and made all haste to rescue the Deborah . We are just in the process of bringing the last few of you aboard. After that we will be making the jump clear of the region of Dark Plants, en route for Fraxinus.”
“Fraxinus?” said the woman, gripping Judy’s arms tightly. “Oh, Watcher save us. Where’s Fraxinus? Is that a safe place?”
“DIANA?” wondered Judy. “I wonder what’s in it for the Free Enterprise, in this rescue? The old companies never did anything that wasn’t going to turn them a profit.”
“What do you mean, what was in it for them?” asked Maurice. “You were in danger and they rescued you. What more is there to say?”
Ask Saskia, thought Judy, noting the other woman’s hungry look. Edward dropped a pan onto the cooktop in the kitchen.
Judy answered Maurice’s question. “The Free Enterprise lives by a way of thinking that was rendered obsolete long ago. It was built by AIs that jumped from Earth on the first Warp Ships, AIs built by organizations like DIANA that saw everything in terms of financial transactions. It saved us, it wanted something in return.”
“What?”
“Venumbs. The Free Enterprise wanted some of the knowledge gained on Fraxinus. And it got it, too.”
“So the passengers all made it to safety?”
“Yes. The Free Enterprise took them to Fraxinus and made a deal. We were saved through the power of old-style capitalism. The Watcher was supposed to have killed that off, but it’s making a resurgence.”
Just look at your ship.
“We’ve traded with Fraxinus, you know,” said Saskia. “You would have seen two of their genetically modified ash trees in the large hold. Those wooden dinosaurs.”
Maurice wasn’t going to be distracted.
“So what about you?” he asked Judy. “What are you doing here?”
There were eventually nearly five hundred humans floating in the plastic bag grown by the Free Enterprise, most of whom were unused to zero gravity. It was unnerving at the best of times to find yourself in a space where nothing was fixed; add to that the fact that you had only just survived an encounter with the Dark Plants, probably losing friends and family in the process, and it was no wonder that the sound of crying filled the bubble. Most of the passengers had formed themselves into loose circles; they gripped each other by the arms as they floated and spoke in tense voices, waiting out their time and watching out for the yellow balls of urine that floated amongst them.
Judy spent most of her time floating near the clear plastic walls of the bubble, trying to get a glimpse of the structure of the Free Enterprise beyond. It was difficult to make out what they were looking at. The ship did not look like a ship at all, more a series of floating points to which objects where tethered.
—I think I can see something, said Jesse.
“What?” Judy asked eagerly. “Hey! Watch out!”
A young man came tumbling towards Judy, face twisted with fury.
“Murderer!” he yelled, raising his voice so that the other passengers could hear him. “She’s a murderer! She said that she would keep us safe, and instead she started killing us one by one. She said she was Social Care—uuugh.”
Judy had elbowed him in the solar plexus as he came near. He doubled over in pain. She leaned close to his ear.
“These people are frightened enough already,” she hissed. “Say anything else and I’ll kill you, too.”
She pushed him away.
“Doesn’t he realize what I was doing?” Judy muttered, watching the young man tumbling away.
“Didn’t he realize why I killed them?”
—Do you know why you did it?
“Oh, yes. And I know it was the right thing. That doesn’t mean it was easy.”
—Damn, Jesse swore. —We’re floating away from the wall.
“We’ll find someone to give us a push back,” she said.
—If they even come near us. Look at how they are watching you. They heard what he said.
“Never mind them,” Judy said brusquely. “What did you see out there?”
—Senses. Scanners. The Free Enterprise is watching us.
Judy folded her arms. Weightlessness made her feel nauseated. Concentrating on other things helped her to forget it.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” she said, thoughtfully. “The Free Enterprise may not have seen humans for one hundred and fifty years. It certainly doesn’t understand our needs. Look at this place: no gravity, no toilet facilities—”
—You don’t understand. The Free Enterprise is watching all of us, but you and me in particular, Judy. It’s using something like laser-ranging devices to scan the passengers. Their beams are out of the visual spectrum, but they make the plastic of the envelope glow as they shine through. You can see pale circular patches, and they are mostly triangulated on us.
“Why?”
—I don’t know.
“What does Jesse think now?” Saskia asked suddenly. “What does he think about us?”
“He’s not here anymore,” Judy said tightly. “He’s gone. The Free Enterprise did something to him.”
“What?”
“They twisted him into something else. Something unliving.”
“What do you mean?”
Saskia’s expression was one of intense curiosity. Seen through the eyes of the meta-intelligence, she simply looked like a machine scanning for data.
Jesse wouldn’t have seen it that way. Jesse gave her knowledge. All the meta-intelligence gave her was information.
Judy didn’t answer Saskia’s question. Instead she went on with her story.
Three hours later, a swarm of tiny probes approached the plastic envelope. Those passengers floating closest scattered in a screaming windmill of bodies as the probes pierced the bubble. The panic that had been building finally rippled out across the enclosed space, and then, with something of an anticlimax, evaporated into embarrassment as the humans realized the probes had resealed the bubble after they entered. Now the probes darted about through the confined space, sucking up bubbles of urine and eating feces. Other probes emitted pale bubbles that floated, honey clear, in the air.
The voice of the Free Enterprise sounded.
“Drink the nectar. It will sustain you for the next few hours, before we arrive on Fraxinus.”
—Fraxinus, said Jesse with some satisfaction.
“I can see something out there,” said Judy. “Something big in the sha
dows of the ship’s superstructure. I’m sure it wasn’t there before. I think you’re right, Jesse: something is watching us.”
She looked around the bubble, saw the other passengers laughing as they sipped at the golden bubbles of nectar.
“Why feed us now, I wonder? This feels like a distraction. What is it doing out there?”
Judy and Jesse spent the next few hours peering out suspiciously through the plastic walls of the bubble. There was something out there, and it seemed to change subtly even as they watched it.
—Maybe I’m getting paranoid, but it seems to be looking at us.
“Hmmm,” answered Judy. She was finding the strange looming shape that hovered just beyond view increasingly unsettling.
—You’re biting your lip, said Jesse.
“Am I?”
Time passed. All around the bubble, the passengers gazed at Judy suspiciously. She ignored them.
Fraxinus turned below them in green and blue and white swirls.
The envelope was collapsing, squeezing passengers towards the waiting ships sent up from the planet below. The familiar white curves of the Earth-designed fliers and shuttles were a welcome relief after the madness of the Free Enterprise.
The plastic walls folded in on themselves in gentle waves, pulsing as they formed the passengers into groups, just the right number to fit onto a waiting ship. Somehow, even though she had been closest to the waiting vessels at the beginning, Judy found herself near the back of the carefully separated warm packages of humanity that were being gulped down. Just as the suspicion took root within her, the walls pulsed again, and nobody noticed that Judy had been trapped in a little bubble of her own. No one noticed when silver arms intruded and seized her, and a meniscus formed around her and she was dragged off through the walls into the cold space beyond.
“Hey!” she called, “help me! Hey, over here!”
She waved frantically at the sleek white shape of an Earth-built flier, sliding past nearby, but the AI inside did not seem to notice her as a probe carried her up and away from the friendly shapes of the waiting ships below, up, up to the schizophrenic logic of the Free Enterprise. She felt a scream curling somewhere down in her stomach, growing as it wormed its sick way around and around, working its way up to her throat…
—Don’t lose it, warned Jesse.
She gulped hot vomit back down inside her. The skin of the meniscus was close to her face; she resisted the urge to reach out and touch it, frightened that it might burst and leave her exposed to the hard vacuum beyond. They passed through a curl of shifting segments, part of the surrounding material of the Free Enterprise. A nest of clear plastic spheres, each containing a jelly-black dot drifted by, then an array of hexagonal containers of all different sizes. And then the probe changed direction and she lost sight of the waiting ships, and Fraxinus all green and friendly below, and she plunged into an open box. The lid snapped shut.
“Hello, Judy.”
Judy was laced to a bench by red and yellow and green and gold strands. She could see them curled around her fingers and wrists and arms, stretched out before her. She could feel them digging into her feet and calves and thighs; they rubbed against her naked back. She was lying facedown on a bench in the middle of a pale green room, straining to hear the electronic movement that was taking place behind her. She wanted to turn her head to see what lay there.
“I know you can hear me, Judy.”
“Where’s Jesse? Why can’t I hear Jesse?”
“We’ve had to suspend certain mechanisms within your body while we complete your development. Why were you left half finished, Judy?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about. Why have you kept me here? Why haven’t you let me go with the other passengers?”
“We’re not sure that we understand why you wished to go with the other passengers, Judy. Why didn’t you make yourself known to us as soon as we took you on board? We could have assisted you.”
“What? Assisted me with what?”
“This is a DIANA ship, and you are an asset of DIANA…”
“Bullshit. I am…I was a Social Care operative.”
“This may be true, yet you remain property of DIANA. Your genetic code contains sequences copyrighted to DIANA, your thought patterns are constructed on a recognized DIANA AI seed algorithm.”
For a moment, Judy was speechless. She fought against her rising indignation, coldly calming herself.
“This is ridiculous. My thoughts are my own. Even if, and I do not believe this to be true for a moment, even if my thoughts were the result of a DIANA AI seed algorithm, then they would still be my own. You cannot copyright a mind.”
“That may be true of the Earth Domain, but not of DIANA’s sphere of influence.”
Judy was thinking fast. At these moments it was helpful to speak to Jesse, but he was gone. Gone? What had the Free Enterprise said, that certain mechanisms had been suspended while it completed her development? What did that mean?
Her hands suddenly flexed, without her meaning them to, the right hand fluttering pitifully, trapped within the colored threads that bound it. What were they doing to her?
“Is this some sort of game?” she shouted. “I think you are being deliberately misled. I have had dealings in the past with DIANA in my work as an SC operative. Did Kevin put you up to this?
Have you heard of him? Maybe he tagged me, some sort of revenge…”
“No, Judy. This goes to the very core of your being. It is in your bones, you might say. You are a DIANA asset. I cannot believe that you did not know this. Surely you know what your purpose is?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Something touched her back and the flesh there went suddenly numb. She strained at the brightly colored laces, saw them digging into her arms and hands, tried to turn her head to see what was happening.
“What are you doing to me?”
A nauseating smell filled the room, a sickly sweet burning.
“Is that me?”
“Judy, we have examined your mind, and we believe that you are telling the truth. You do not realize what your purpose is; you are not even aware of the reason for your existence. Sadly, neither are we. Therefore, we are taking what we believe to be appropriate action. We are now performing whatever repairs that we can to your mechanism.”
“What repairs?”
“Activating the meta-intelligence that has stalled within you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is the problem: you appear to be lacking the most basic information regarding your purpose. Therefore we are arranging for you to be returned to Earth for repairs and reprogramming.”
“Earth! But I don’t want to go to Earth!”
“Exactly our point. You seem to have acquired the notion that you have free will and the right to self-determination. You need to be reminded of DIANA’s core purposes. Arrangements have been made. We should have a ship here within a few weeks.”
Maurice stared at Judy, his eyes wide.
“A ship? But that’s us.”
Judy shrugged.
“Like I said, call me Jonah. I’m a broken machine, and they’re sending me back for repairs. And there’s nothing we can do to stop them.”
Edward had come into the room from the kitchen. He was gazing at Judy, his hands red and greasy from the chicken he had been preparing. The meta-intelligence rendered him as something so simple, like a pleasing, undemanding pattern of square tiles.
“Don’t you want to go to Earth, Judy?” he asked.
“Of course she doesn’t, Edward,” said Maurice impatiently.
“But she might be able to find out what happened to her. How long will it take to get to Earth?”
Maurice slid his fingers over his console.
“Today’s Sunday. We’ll be there Friday. Six days.”
“Six days?” said Edward. Nobody else was speaking. “Why don’t you try to run, Judy?”
Maurice and Saskia
couldn’t meet Judy’s eyes. Only Edward stared at her with his honest, open gaze. She addressed her answer to him.
“I’ve tried, Edward. I’ve been running for over ten years. But someone wants me to go back to Earth.”
“Who?”
“Someone called Chris.”
“Who is he?”
Judy almost smiled. “A bad person. Actually, a bad robot. He wants me to kill someone there.”
“Who?”
“The Watcher.”
Now Judy had Maurice and Saskia’s full attention.
“The Watcher?” said Maurice. “Why do you want to kill the Watcher?”
“I don’t. Chris told me that I would someday.”
“When did he tell you this?”
“Twelve years ago.”
“How could you possibly do it, anyway? The Watcher was the first AI. It is the most powerful entity known to humankind.” Maurice snorted. “It’s not even as if there is a reason for killing it! You might disagree with its actions, you might find them restrictive, but it’s doing its best. It nurtures humans! Why would you want to kill it?”
“I don’t know. Chris is a powerful AI himself. He wants the Watcher out of the way; he thinks that he has better plans for how humanity should operate. He thinks that I will agree with him someday.”
“Do you think that he’s right?”
“I hope that he’s not. I’ve spent the last twelve years wondering about it. That’s why I ran. I suppose now, at last, I’ll get to find out.”
Edward shook his head. He turned to the new captain of the Eva Rye . “We don’t have to take her, do we, Saskia? Not if she doesn’t want to go?”
Without speaking, Maurice traced a pattern across the surface of his console. Pale gold letters sprang to life in the middle of the living area.
Violation of Contract?
Are you sure you wish to disengage from a Fair
Exchange?
Yes/No ?
Saskia tilted her head forward so that she was looking up at Edward from under her purple-black fringe.
“I don’t think we have any choice, Edward,” she murmured.
maurice 1: 2252
Edward had made surethere were three boiled and three roast potatoes for everyone sitting at the table. Maurice had watched him share them out carefully, counting under his breath as Edward spooned them one by one onto each plate.
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