Supernova

by C. Gockel

  Alaric flushed from his collar to his hairline.

  James’s circuits sparked with the incongruity of the shy, yet media-savvy priests, Alaric’s obvious discomfort, and the whole situation: Androids and Luddecceans working together, the brief moment of levity in a situation rapidly becoming more desperate.

  He looked at 6T9—expecting to find a smile of bemusement at the captain’s discomfort, but 6T9 was glaring at Darmadi as though he could shoot phasers from his eyes. Volka put a hand to her mouth and made a noise that even James knew was a laugh disguised as a cough, and the other android relaxed.

  “You’ll have to render the images in 3D,” James suggested, drawing on a routine for “solicitousness” that he hoped the priests regarded as sincere, rather than the vengefulness it really was. “And edit them for maximum appeal.”

  Scanning their tablets, the priests nodded sagaciously. “Oh, yes, of course!”

  “You will pay for this,” Darmadi whispered.

  James tilted his head. Darmadi was capable of violence. But he was also very competent. It wouldn’t be competent to announce a threat of destruction aloud, ergo the threat was for punishment in kind, and a promise that they would see each other again, probably outside of their official capacities. He couldn’t help smiling.

  18

  The Play

  Galactic Republic : Time Gate 5

  Standing next to “Buck” on Time Gate 5’s loading dock, Volka couldn’t help feeling like they weren’t his rescuers but his slavers.

  “And you are?” the freighter captain asked, hand on his neural port, eyes on Buck. Buck had new limbs, and new skin and hair—thankfully in a shade lighter than Sixty’s—it wasn’t quite like looking at his mentally challenged twin. Buck answered the captain, “I’m called Buck. Or Dumb Buck. Or Dumb Luck. Or Dumb Fu—”

  “Serial number will be fine,” the captain said. The captain smelled like stale air, unwashed hair, and of the soy bar he’d just eaten. His thoughts were straightforward: Forty-six more sex ‘bots to load, fifty-three minutes until departure … after that, his brain was a three-dimensional star chart of all the unincorporated settlements in Kanakah he was going to visit in the next six months … if they didn’t get caught by those pirates that he was hearing about on the ‘nets. Nebulas, he was glad that he’d updated his ship’s weapons and defenses, and glad that this job paid so much he could do that. Half now, half later, and—

  “Ma’am,” the freighter captain said to Volka, “you need to let him go.”

  She’d grabbed Buck by the shirt sleeve. “Just a moment,” she said, steering Buck to the side and letting a RussianDoll ‘bot that was not the Q-comm spouting Mila take his place.

  “And you are?” the captain asked the Doll with considerably more interest.

  “Anyone you want me to be!” She giggled and bounced.

  Volka focused hard on Buck so as not to hear the captain’s thoughts. Looking over her head, Buck smirked and winked at one of the freighter crew, a man with a belly overflowing his pants and a bulbous nose such a bright red shade it might have been augmented to be that way. All the man’s attention was on Buck—and his attention was—Volka tried to shake his thoughts out of her mind … ugh. Buck blew him a kiss.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Volka asked.

  “Do what?” Buck replied.

  Volka squeezed her eyes shut. She had to be very specific. “Are you sure you want to go to the uncharted settlements and submit regular reports of your activity—”

  “My sexual activity!” Buck said too loud.

  “—and local incidents of fever,” Volka finished, ears going back, trying to not look at the attention that had drawn. He’d report in every twenty-four hours, sending a lightbeam signal to a Luddeccean intelligence outpost—the nearest place with a Q-comm transmitter—and the Kanakah Gate, in the event the Luddeccean outpost was compromised. From Buck’s assigned location, that lightbeam signal would take a week to reach the first, a week and a half to reach the second.

  “I am allowed to have sex with any adult, and I don’t even have to charge money!” Buck declared, even louder still.

  Red Nose’s thoughts went from obscene to blankly delighted. The captain thought he’d have to make sure all ‘bots got to their destinations and weren’t kept aboard … except maybe holding onto the RussianDoll would be worth the loss of income …

  A male voice, calm and familiar, but not accompanied by any scent she recognized, came from behind her. “He’s not human.”

  Spinning, Volka found herself staring at the chest of a neat, gray suit with chrome buttons. She looked up into the face of a man taller than Sixty. It was a familiar face, yet difficult to place. He was very handsome, with a medium skin tone, high cheekbones, full lips, wavy hair that seemed impossibly brushed back from his forehead. The spark of a Q-comm in the waves said he wasn’t human, but he wouldn’t have passed anyway. His eyes were like liquid mercury: no pupil, no iris, and no white, just shimmering silver. It was impossible to say where exactly he was looking, though he was bowing toward her slightly, as though to be heard more clearly. She’d only seen eyes like that once before.

  She swallowed and guessed. “Gate 5?”

  The man inclined his head, a yes or a no, a simple acknowledgement of her words, she wasn’t sure, but he continued, and his voice made her certain. “It is not fair to assign human motivations to him. Buck wants to—”

  “Give sexual satisfaction to as many humans as I can!” Buck smiled as bright as sunshine. But then the smile dropped. “At Donner, they had to pay money.” His shoulders sagged. “So many people couldn’t pay, and I had to say, ‘no.’” He straightened. “Not anymore! Bucky is feeling lucky!” Grinning, he twisted his body and gave another wink to Red Nose. The man’s mouth fell open, and he oozed lust in scent and thought, but nothing explicit. He was too overcome with joy.

  “Barney, get back to work!” the captain bellowed.

  Hitching up his pants, “Barney” of the Red Nose scampered deeper into the ship, joy buoying every step.

  Buck lifted his chin and smiled. “Barney wants to Buck the fu—”

  “Buck—” Volka said.

  His brow furrowed. “I got the word order of that poem wrong. Verb, and then proper noun, so it’s fu—”

  “That’s lovely poetry,” she said quickly.

  His chest puffed, and he smiled at her, but then looked over his shoulder at the ship. “Bucky wants to give Barney some ducky.”

  Gate 5 said, “It is what he wants. Believe him. We can lie, but it’s not our first inclination.”

  “He could be hurt,” Volka said.

  “Bucky likes him some smack and tucky!” said Buck.

  “You could get hurt, too,” Gate 5 replied. “Every time you get out of bed in the morning.”

  “But I know it. He doesn’t,” Volka countered.

  “You’re denying him his purpose,” Gate 5 said.

  Volka’s lips parted to protest, but then Buck sighed. “Bucky hasn’t gotten or given any ducky, and it’s been super su—” The last word was obliterated by the screech of inner airlock doors opening and the drum of many footsteps.

  “Would you want to live longer but without autonomy?” Gate 5 asked.

  Her ears curled. No, she wouldn’t. It still didn’t feel right. But it was for the greater good, too, wasn’t it? Buck couldn’t be infected. And as long as his head was mostly in one piece, he couldn’t even really die. But maybe he’d fall into the hands of someone like FET12’s former owners. 6T9 said that they’d tortured FET12 but kept his masochism settings low so his “pain” was more authentic sounding. Most sadists actually liked the idea of their targets enjoying themselves.

  Buck hadn’t had that same terrible experience. Sixty said that he’d been owned by the same brothel for a hundred years, and his owners had taken scrupulous care of him. He’d been a valuable commodity. Now he was being offered to a brothel as part of a scheme to control an infect
ious disease. The Unincorporated Settlement Health Alliance was the ‘bots—allowing brothels to offer a “free sample” to as many customers as Buck could handle, yet get paid for it—so long as the ‘bots were returned in one piece, and so long as Buck was allowed his twenty-four-hour check-ins. Apparently, it wasn’t a new scheme and had been used to curb the spread of Ganymedean syphilis fifty years back.

  It sounded terrible to Volka, but Buck seemed delighted. Maybe he was just programmed to feel that way? Maybe she was just programmed to feel her way.

  “Okay, Buck, you go,” she whispered. “But be careful.”

  Already heading for the gangway, Buck waved. “Don’t worry! I am a model of hygiene!”

  Volka sighed as he vanished into the freighter. From behind her came more sex ‘bots—more RussianDolls, ManNUniforms wearing very little in the way of uniforms, and Lolitas in schoolgirl outfits. They were all former recruits from Sixty’s time in New Grande, patched up good as new after enduring phaser fire and nuclear fallout. Sixty had gone to retrieve them from another part of the gate. They’d gotten lost and distracted. By the cloud of scents that followed them, Volka could guess how.

  Turning and rising to her tiptoes, she tried to look above their heads … and failed.

  “Android General 1’s at the door, shooing them inside,” Gate 5 said. “Ah, now he is making his way here.”

  A few seconds later, Sixty emerged from the crowd of ‘bots, muttering, “It’s like herding werfles.” Carl Sagan, perched on his shoulder and awake for once, squeaked. “Don’t insult my host species.”

  Sixty caught sight of Volka, narrowed one eye, and opened the other wide. Approaching her, he said, “You tried to convince him not to go.”

  Ears flicking, Volka said, “I only asked him if he really wanted to.” She raised her hands. “He’s like a child.”

  “No, he is not,” Gate 5 replied. “A human child has deduction powers and potential he does not.” He shook his head. “Metaphors are always fallacies.”

  Sixty regarded Five. “A real-world avatar, Five?”

  Five inclined his head again in not quite a yes or no. “Things I need and want to do require it. Not everyone has a neural interface.” He bowed to Volka once more. “It is nice to finally meet you.”

  “And you,” she replied.

  Straightening, he said, “If you are hungry, there is a Korean BBQ open on my promenade. You’re completely safe here. I have screened everyone aboard.”

  Volka had had another bad night—or morning, rather—and despite or because of that, her stomach growled.

  “We do have a little time,” Sixty said.

  And who knew when they would again? The Skimmers and two of the Luddeccean Net-Drive LCS would begin searching for System Zero and the Dark’s shipyard again soon. Admiral Sato and Luddeccean Command were working out the exact plans now.

  “That would be nice,” she said.

  Rubbing his belly, Carl licked a gleaming drop of greenish venom from his lips. “Butterball says their beef isn’t even lab grown.”

  Taking her hand, Sixty said to Five, “We’d love directions.”

  Five looked down at their hands. His face was expressionless, but it wasn’t scary on Five; maybe because it usually was expressionless. Inclining his chin toward the floor between them, he said, “Just follow the emergency lighting.”

  At his words, a tiny light went on at Sixty’s and Volka’s feet.

  “Thank you,” Sixty said.

  Since it seemed they were being dismissed, Volka said, “I hope we see each other again soon.”

  Perhaps Five stared at her, or perhaps he stared at nothing at all. Did the mercury lighten at the center of his eyes like a reverse iris? “I will see you until you leave,” he replied, sounding a trifle confused.

  And Volka remembered that although he was the man before them, they were also inside him, and, she noted, gaze flicking to the corners of the room, he had cameras everywhere. Snapping his hands behind his back, with a curt nod, he turned on his heels and left them … but not really, she remembered. They had to leave him.

  “Awesome computational power,” Sixty murmured in a tone that someone might say, “I would love to have that hovercraft.”

  Carl’s whiskers twitched, and his body twisted 180 degrees to follow Five as he left.

  “How much computational power does he have?” Volka asked as Sixty led her along the lights in the floor. Each time they reached one, it winked out and another lit before them. It reminded Volka of fairy stories of will-o’-the-wisps.

  Sixty frowned and looked heavenward. “I don’t think you can really compare his computational power to human computational power.”

  Carl swiveled around. “I don’t think he’d pass the Turning Test.”

  “Do you mean Turing Test?” Sixty said.

  “I’m sure I said it right the first time,” Carl sniffed.

  Volka found herself smiling. She was happy whenever she understood something technological. The Turing Test had been devised in the 1950s—before AI even existed! It was a test to determine whether a machine was capable of thinking like a human being. Certainly, Five seemed a little odd, but, she thought of his mysterious, liquid mercury eyes, and her ears shot forward. “I don’t think he would want to.”

  The trail of lights they were following flashed brightly.

  Sixty tilted his head. “I know he has political aspirations … I wonder if that wouldn’t negatively impact him?”

  The lights dimmed again.

  “Hmm …” said Carl. He licked his lips. “Volka, Butterball says that we can ask for raw beef without marinade. No onions or garlic!”

  Volka’s ears swiveled as she considered. “Chocolate, soy, onions, and garlic make me sick, but I’m human enough that no one suspects that. Maybe sometimes it’s better that people know you are not human, then they don’t have human expectations of you.”

  Her ears folded. Like she had had for Buck.

  For a few seconds, Sixty’s Q-comm flashed brightly in the waves. “Humans judge on what is felt. Machines judge on outcomes.”

  “What do you mean?” Volka asked.

  Not pausing, he looked down at her for a few moments. She had to look ahead to not run into something, but Sixty didn’t need to. He probably had memorized the long hallway they had entered and had apps to keep him orientated. “I had to kill Infected children in New Grande,” he said.

  Volka stammered. “I’m … so … sorry.”

  Gazing at her evenly, he said, “I didn’t feel guilt like you did.”

  Volka gaped up at him, aghast.

  “I think machines are more binary. It was the right thing to do. I saved uninfected children and adults,” Sixty said, and that was the Sixty she knew. The one who was protective and cared about humans.

  Sixty continued, “Yet, if I had shown remorse, perhaps I wouldn’t have had Molotov cocktails thrown in my general direction.”

  “That’s terrible,” Volka gasped.

  Sixty shrugged. “It actually worked out. They fell on the corpses of the Infected and sterilized them.”

  Volka probably wouldn’t have been as sanguine in the same circumstances. She glanced down at their linked hands. They were very different, not just because of their cultures, or because of his programming, but because of something deeper and more intrinsic than a program … something that was perhaps hardware, not software.

  They entered a wide thoroughfare at that point. It wasn’t as crowded as Time Gate 1, which was a relief. The waves didn’t hum with distracting thoughts; the scene was distracting enough. There was evidence that a battle had been fought here. Some shops had metal “boards” on their windows, and here and there the walls were blackened as though by smoke. An air vent’s metal grate had been partially melted; its bars were intact, but wavy, and at first, Volka thought her vision had blurred.

  Despite the signs of previous chaos, the public holosphere was bright and new. It was showing a news broadcast,
as they always seemed to in public transportation hubs. In the holo’s light was a concrete disc, suspended in the darkness of the void, massive in relation to the ships zipping around it. In the background was a slender time gate, enshrouded in a bubble of light. The camera zoomed in on the gate. The bubble shrank and vanished, and a massive ship of the kind generally used for human transport appeared in the gate’s ring.

  “That’s Kanakah Gate,” Sixty whispered.

  An announcer’s voice began explaining the scene. “Against the advice of Galactic Republic, retired members of Fleet and Local Guard forces have been answering the call for volunteers. They’re paid in Luddeccean minerals that frankly aren’t much even with the drop in imports from Systems Six and Thirteen.”

  The holo switched to Alaric standing before James’s imaginary view of Atlantea. His fist was clenched in the air before his chest, and his lips were moving, yet it was the announcer’s voice that continued to play. “Was it the impassioned speech by Captain Darmadi?” The scene switched to a younger Alaric in the later stages of his training. His hair wasn’t nearly white like it was now. He looked like he had when they’d been lovers: younger, innocent, softer, even though in the holo he was climbing an impossibly high rope, and his face was tight with concentration. Volka gulped. The announcer continued, “Or maybe it was the leaked footage of Luddeccean military training obtained by the holostudio producing ‘My, Captain, My Barbarian.’ Many were moved by the dedication and devotion—fanaticism, some say—of unaugmented humans put through such rigorous training.” The scene shifted. “We caught up with one former pilot to find out just exactly what motivated her to join.”

  Sometime when they’d paused to watch, a crowd had gathered around the holo, and now someone was saying, “I’d join too if I had the qualifications.”

  “I’d be right there with you,” said another.

  The screen flashed, and two male and female announcers appeared. Both were smiling, and the brightness of their teeth was almost blinding. “We interrupt this broadcast with a breaking story. The artist formerly known as the Venus de Willendorf, and then as the Venus de Rubens, and now as La genie du mal has announced that—”