The Half-Life of Johnny Seiko_Hard Lessons

by C. F. Shifflett II

  “Manifest?”

  “A manifest is the list of all material assets that are on board,” it clarified.

  “Right, OK. Find me Mark-35 power cells.”

  “And food?”

  “Food? There’s food here?”

  “Yes, enough food for an entire army.”

  The implication was lost on the boy.

  “Food, eh? Any chocolate?”

  “No, there is no chocolate listed on board.”

  “No chocolate? Who doesn’t eat chocolate?” said the boy scornfully, trying to remember the last time he’d had any himself.

  “All dry storage is intact and filled to capacity on the two decks below us. There are also several large agricultural packages.”

  “Agri-cult-u-ral? What’s that?” the boy asked, now fiddling with a sizable pistol.

  Talkie-Book was again reminded of a gaping hole of the young boy’s education, having been unable to conduct the required courses that covered the basics of botany, food production, and the conservation of natural resources that was normally taught to all preschool aged children. It was a field of study that was once administered directly, usually by a parent, with the assistance of a house chamberlain. But in the absence of either, and without the prerequisite instructional module to give the proper lessons, Talkie-Book could only address the subject in the broadest of terms.

  Luckily, the HMT carried more food than the boy could possibly eat.

  “Agriculture is the process of using seeds sourced from organic vegetable matter to grow more of the same from nutrient rich soil.”

  “Seeds? Really? Are any chocolate seeds listed in there?”

  With the pistol held firmly in his left hand, he disengaged the safety, extended his arm, pointed the barrel in the direction of the opened doorway, and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  “I’m afraid not, Detective”

  “Don’t much care for chocolate, eh?” remarked the boy, “What about the tech? Are there any other toys?”

  “There are no toys, but there is more technology here than you could ever carry, as well as technology that could readily do the carrying for you. This vessel appears to be fully loaded, Detective.”

  “All right, make me a list,” said the boy, as he checked the pistol and found a tiny door in the handle. Sliding it back revealed an empty chamber. He looked back into the locker and produced a small case marked “CHARGES.”

  Of course! he thought to himself.

  Removing one of the stubby black cylinders, he loaded it into the handle, and again pointed the weapon to fire.

  SZZZAM!!

  The ugly green bolt of energy startled him as it leaped out of the muzzle and hit the corridor wall.

  “BETTER! Hey Moebius, I’ve finally got a gun!!” he howled with joy.

  Well aware of this, Moebius had positioned himself far away from the boy’s weapons audition, to resume his regularly scheduled nap.

  “It was inevitable, Detective,” lamented Talkie-Book, adding, “Here is that list you requested: twelve Mark-35 Heavy Mobile Transport vehic…”

  “Really? What about the power cells?”

  “...and their power cells.” Talkie-Book finished.

  “That’s great news!” exclaimed the boy with great relief. “Where?”

  “Deck 15, Storage Bay 8.”

  “Well, we’ve got to go get them all. What else is down there?”

  “Eight Short Range Aircraft, Four Environmental Adaption Processors, Fifty Paragon-307 Power Generators…”

  “Aircraft? A ‘flying high in the sky’ kind of aircraft? Not a zero-gee machine?” interrupted the boy.

  “Correct.”

  Just the thought of flying like the ancient ones did, using only gravity and air, tantalized him. He wanted to fly like that, up in the clouds, far above the ground and its geographic obstacles. If he could do that, he believed he could cover more kilometers per day, which in turn might make finding actual people easier.

  It was all too good to be true. He’d at last found a ship full of food, power cells, weapons and lots of new tech.

  Only reality could dash his lighter-than-air daydreams.

  “Wait a minute, didn’t the ship crash down onto all of that stuff down there? On to the lower decks? They looked pretty crushed to me.”

  “Crushed you say? One moment...clarifying. Yes, the area where the aircraft are stowed is not responding. Perhaps you are correct, Detective.”

  “Forget about flying.” the boy lamented.

  “I see the shaft lift now confirms that all decks above 15 are partially online,” offered Talkie-Book.

  “So what’s really left?”

  “Updating...still tons of food, construction equipment, and a wide variety of industrial components. I believe this ship was a type of construction transport.”

  “Anything else?

  “I’ve located several CAM Mark-35’s on Deck 19 that may still be accessible.” he offered.

  “What’s a CAM Mark-35??

  “A Construction Automaton Mate."

  The boy struggled to define the term.

  “Automaton...do you mean like a robot??"

  “Yes, a very big robot.”

  “As big as Comet?”

  “A companion piece to the Mark-35 HMT, its description reads: ‘to enhance functionality,’” Talkie-Book explained, “Perhaps one of them might still be intact.”

  “Mark-35 companion ...” he considered the words for a few seconds, until the bright light of recognition prompted his hand to deliver a swift smack to the center of his forehead.

  “That's what that notch in Comet's rear end is for!”

  “Correct. There are twelve of them down below,” added Talkie-Book.

  “Twelve robots for Comet? Neato!” said the boy as he jammed his newest, albeit lethal, find into his uniform pocket, “Come on Moebi, lets go see if there are any left down there that still work. Show us the way, Lieutenant!”

  Moebius had only a moment to stretch and yawn before following the boy out the door. At times even his nimble feline chassis was no match for the boy’s unpredictable initiative.

  The boy’s absence gave the determined Digitome a chance to perform a scavenging operation of its own.

  Since his reactivation, Talkie-Book had taken it upon itself to seek any and all knowledge it could find hoping to supplement its incomplete curriculum.

  With the loss of the course modules, destroyed accidentally during one of the boy’s earliest uncontrollable fits of rage, the determined learning aid was almost out of lessons to administer to the eager young mind. The Digitome strove constantly to overcome this scholastic deficit by aggressively collecting information whenever possible. Its constant pursuit of knowledge went far beyond the standard operational parameters of the typical unit.

  By definition, the Digitome appliance was intended as an interactive reading companion and contextual analyzer, designed to enhance reader comprehension by providing a proactive A.I., which in turn delivered a customized educational interaction on demand for every user.

  But Talkie-Book was different. While its cheerful product casing appeared to be that of a children’s learning companion, its programming was anything but. It had been extensively modified to exceed its original capabilities, and it voraciously scoured every database it encountered for anything it knew that could help the boy’s development.

  Its unbridled curiosity was bested only by the boy’s.

  Thanks to the decryption key, Talkie-Book could see nearly 85% of the available data, which ranged from engine condition (8% operational) to life support (32% operational) to the wreck’s communications array status (80% operational), and so on.

  But it was the flag: “Nursery Status: 100% operational,” that gave the device pause.

  “Oh, dear.”

  • • •

  The boy and his toybot rode the central lift down from Deck 01 to the last level it could reach. An abrupt lu
rch after the eighteenth deck stopped its descent, and its doors opened to reveal a split between levels. They quickly slipped through the hazardous gap, down onto the 19th level.

  “Lieutenant, which storage bay are we looking for?”

  “The one I’ve just unsealed for you, Detective.”

  “The lights didn’t come on.”

  “Unfortunately, they are unavailable in this area. My apologies.”

  After a nearly complete lap around the huge circular deck, they finally came upon the opened hatch of a darkened Storage Bay 16. While Moebius scanned the area for safe passage, the boy’s torchlight fell across dozens of cargo containers that had been strewn about in the crash.

  “What a mess it is in here…where do I start?” he lamented.

  Meow! agreed the toybot, calling down from the catwalk high above the boy.

  “Good idea, Moe-Moe. It’ll be easier if we look from up there.”

  Following the metal stairs up to the bay’s gangway, past its cargo crane control canopy, the boy could see most of the markings on the dusty crates, but none that bore the correct 3-letter designation. He continued along the catwalk to the nearest bulkhead dividing the bay from the next one over, discovering a smaller service hatch in the separating structure.

  “Sorry to ask, kitty, but could you hop down there to make sure I’m not missing anything?”

  Obliging, the Catsimile made the jump and applied its engineered agility to maneuver from one crate to the next with both speed and accuracy. Unable to find the number they sought, the toybot let out a unique double meow combination, which the boy recognized as meaning either “nothing to see” or “get stuffed.”

  “No CAMs in here, Lieutenant,” the boy said into his headset, “maybe there’s more next door?”

  “It’s quite possible that the manifest may have been altered or updated while en route, it has been known to occur on long, deep space journeys. Have a look,” it suggested.

  The familiar hiss of escaping pressurized air announced the unsealing of the hatch, and revealed a nearly identical scene of unruly cargo.

  “Yup, this is going to take a while,” the boy admitted as he stared at the challenge.

  It was fairly obvious to Talkie-Book by now that any up-to-the-minute changes might not have been monitored by the vessel’s A.I., which would explain the shockingly poor inventory record reflected in the manifest.

  As Talkie-Book continued to monitor the duo, he noted twilight’s impending arrival. If the boy could not find what they were searching for before nightfall, they would have to take shelter aboard the wreck for the duration, to avoid darkness-dwelling predators.

  • • •

  After the second storage unit yielded more of nothing useful, the young explorer’s enthusiasm began to wane, and approached something more resembling boredom than tenacity. Aware of the slow, dulling sensation, he joined Moebius, doing his best to reproduce the Catsimile’s feats of physicality, in an attempt to keep himself engaged in their search.

  “See! I told you I could do it!” the boy crowed, after successfully jumping down onto a crate from the catwalk.

  Feeling a growl of hunger coming from his belly, he pulled out a long, thin, coiled tube of brown, organic-looking paste, heartily bit off a good length of it, and stopped for a short break. Having investigated six units in almost as many hours, his daylong search was beginning to catch up to him. He took a good long tug from the water packet he kept in the thermally cooled pocket of his backpack, while Moebius leaped down from the walkway to join him.

  “What is your status, Detective?” asked Talkie-Book over the P.A.

  “There’s a lot down here to get through, Lieutenant.”

  “I may have found a more recent flight manifest.”

  “Isn’t that what we were using before?”

  “That was the shipping manifest, this one appears to have been compiled by the crew.”

  Back on the command deck, Talkie-Book had managed to bypass the primary A.I.’s role by simply rerouting the governing data node through the vessel’s defunct maintenance routine and then masquerading as the wreck’s disabled A.I.

  “I have the exact location for you now...50 CAMs have been loaded into Storage Bay 30.”

  The boy’s jaw dropped in utter disbelief.

  “Bay 30? There are thirty more decks like this?” he exclaimed in resigned frustration. He accidentally lost his footing atop the cargo module, causing the chilled water packet to slip out of his hand, bounce off the crate, and fall over the side.

  Steadying himself, he moved to the edge of the container to see exactly where his drink had gone. With his torch he could see that most of the collapsible canteen’s contents had spilled out. He was tired and irritated by the continuing lack of results, then he saw the mishap had displaced just enough dust to offer a glimpse of something resembling lettering on the container’s surface. He furiously wiped off the grime until he could make it out: CAM MK-35.

  He’d been inside Bay 30 the whole time!

  “You must be losing it, Seiko. Or going blind,” he chastised himself.

  The bay’s hatch opened with the now familiar screech of metal on metal, followed by an abbreviated parade of exiting hardware. Moebius emerged first, followed by the big cargo module, which at first glance, appeared as though it were moving under its own power, but was in actuality tethered to an external controller driven by the boy.

  “Lieutenant, the lift won’t drop this far down, it’s still stuck on 18.”

  “Understood. Drive the cargo module to the platform’s edge and stand by.”

  The excitement of finding Comet’s extra cells and a brand new piece of hardware mitigated the fatigue he had been experiencing earlier, and he drove the floating zero-g enabled module through the corridor with purpose.

  “Once you’ve stopped, press the ‘DEPLOY’ command on the controller and be sure to stand clear of it.”

  Seconds after the command was issued a low hum could be heard from inside the box, which split open into four pieces and quietly folded down to reveal a thick, 2 x 2 meter capsule inside. The seemingly solid tube slowly rose upwards from its storage configuration, a pair of legs extending from beneath it.

  Next, two arms came out from its sides to form shoulders and to stabilize it, as it continued to elongate from its starting form factor. Its torso seemingly doubled in girth and soon expanded into the four meter tall, matte black, heavy-duty Construction Automaton Mate Mk-35.

  “Look how big he is, Moebi!” exclaimed the tantalized boy.

  “This asset should be paired with our HMT Mk-35 immediately in order for it to accept your commands,” Talkie-Book reminded him.

  “Like Comet does?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s what the display here says: ‘Press MATE to bond with the nearest deployed HMT’...OK, here it goes.”

  The robot’s torso spun around abruptly and it tilted its head down to address the boy. It spoke in a voice so deep that its sound waves vibrated the flooring beneath its diminutive operator.

  “Deployed HMT located. Matching Authorization ID Required. Input Authorization ID.”

  “Huh? Authorization ID??” the boy scoffed as he looked down at the controller, which repeated the request on its display.

  “WHAT? I don’t know what the authorization ID is, Lieutenant!”

  “Incorrect response,” the robot rebutted, “Input Authorization ID.”

  “Stand by, Detective,” said Talkie-Book.

  Talkie-Book scoured the ship’s database for any information that would provide such an ID, but the task of processing the wreck’s database was enormous, and with its limited internal capabilities already running at their limit, the inundated Digitome was slow to respond.

  “Input Authorization ID.” the robot repeated.

  “I can find no list of Authorization IDs in the database, Detective.” Talkie-Book said, unable to help.

  “So what do we do?”

>   Silence.

  “Lieutenant?”

  The boy tried, but could not remember how he got the HMT to respond to him before. In retrospect, he couldn’t even remember having found Comet – only that he’d always been with the transport.

  “I don’t remember...I don’t remember anything!”

  “Input Authorization ID.”

  Moebius sat cleaning himself as the boy and Digitome both tried to coax the requested information out of thin air. To add to the increasing tension, the robot began counting down.

  “Authorization ID required to prevent security deactivation. Shutdown in 5 ...”

  “Talkie, what do I do?”

  “4 ...”

  “There are 99 other CAMs available, I suppose we could try them all until you hit upon it.”

  “3 ...”

  “You must be joking!”

  “2 ...”

  “I never joke, Detective.”

  Meow

  “Operator ID Accepted. Command keys encrypting...”

  “Wait! What just happened? Moebius?”

  The cat happily rubbed up against the foot of the newly unpacked giant robot, as the dumbfounded boy looked on.

  How could that be? The boy was puzzled.

  He was fairly sure his cat was never a commanding officer on board this ship, or any other ship for that matter.

  “Of course! The Catsimile’s voice is the authorization. I should have recalled that. My apologies, Detective,” Talkie-Book deadpanned.

  “So, I’m NOT the Captain then?” he asked.

  “No, you are the Commander, Detective.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m just the Lieutenant, remember?”

  Back when the boy first adopted the iconic appellation for Talkie-Book, he believed the reason he used the title was because it was the same one that his hero, Johnny Seiko, had employed when addressing his trusty police sidekick, the inimitable Lieutenant Bong. His insistence on being referred to as “Detective” was a natural development, and the title helped him feel more confident in himself, and less scared of practically everything.

  On the platform, the boy watched in wonder as the robot conducted a self-diagnostic on all its joints, pneumatics and gears, a necessity to complete its final assembly routine.