by B. V. Larson
She shrugged helplessly. “I really don’t have any idea. But it’s not going the way anyone had planned. I’m certain of that.”
I nodded. “It never does with Marvin,” I said. “It never does…thank you, Kate.”
I walked with her toward medical. I didn’t ask her any more questions. I didn’t want to, and I didn’t have to. I knew I would see for myself how bad things were very soon.
When I tapped on the door to medical, it didn’t respond right away. The door wouldn’t open. Frowning in immediate suspicion, I’m afraid I lost my temper.
I punched through the relatively thin sheen of nanites that formed the door. Really, it wasn’t hard to do. The metal was less dense than steel, and only about a quarter of an inch thick. A bullet would have gone right through it. In this case my fist went through it so far that I fell against the door, and was left with my cheek pressing against the cool, trembling metal.
The nanites, which had been put into lock-down mode somehow, were forced to recognize me and react to my presence. They remembered their programming, which was somewhat similar to that of an earthly elevator. When a human arm was detected protruding through the door from one chamber to another, they were compelled to relax and melt away. It was part of the safety protocol that kept them from accidentally slicing our bodies in half.
When I stumbled into the dimly lit chamber, I saw Marvin immediately. He was in a new configuration I didn’t recognize. Then, staring, I slowly came to understand what I was seeing.
His central body structure was often cylindrical, but this time it was oblong and all in one piece, rather than segmented like a metal centipede. From this central box-like unit, all his tentacles and cameras extended in a halo of instrumentation.
“Oh…so nice of you to drop by, Colonel Riggs,” he said.
I stepped forward three paces, squinting in the gloom. Behind me, Dr. Swanson lingered in the passageway. She showed no inclination to enter, and I didn’t blame her. I’d seen horrors perpetrated by Marvin when he got really wrapped up in a biological project. They were never pretty to human eyes.
“Where’s—” I began, but the word “Sandra” never left my lips.
Because I saw her then, or at least I saw part of her—her feet. They were visible through a small window that allowed one to look inside Marvin’s body.
I finally came to fully understand what I was looking at. Marvin had subsumed the medical enclosure that was Sandra’s life-support system. He had become one with the medical instrument, and was literally all over Sandra.
Oddly, this disturbing image eased my emotional state. Sure, it was frightening to look at. For someone not used to Marvin, and his self-designing behaviors, it might appear to be something out of a horror movie. But I knew Marvin, and I knew how he operated. He liked to reconfigure himself inventively.
“Marvin, that’s Sandra inside your belly, isn’t it?”
“An interesting metaphor,” he said. “But as I’m not digesting her tissues, it’s not really apt. I would rather say that I’ve reconfigured myself into a convenient formation to better address my patient.”
“Right,” I said. “Now, give me a progress report.”
Marvin hesitated. That was always a bad sign.
“The subject is still alive—technically,” he said.
My mouth opened, then closed again, twice. I took a few steps toward him. This earned me the attention of several more cameras. His tentacles, which often whipped about in a frenzied fashion when excited, slowed. Only a few of them still rustled quietly. These few retracted toward his body, like cords being dragged slowly across the floor.
“‘The subject’,” I repeated back to him. “‘Is technically still alive…’”
“Exactly.”
“Marvin, that doesn’t sound encouraging. Have you managed to repair her mind? Is your new science of—what did you call it?”
“Necrological reconstruction.”
“Right. Has any of that worked out?”
“No.”
He stopped there, and so did I. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. I heard something behind me, and turned my head. Over my shoulder I heard Dr. Kate Swanson’s retreating footsteps. She had left me here with Marvin and the thing in his gut which had once been my mate.
“What?” I asked him hazily. Just for a moment, I thought I must not have heard him correctly.
“The science is a failure in this instance. You see, she’s not a valid subject.”
“What are you talking about? Can’t you revive her?”
“Technically, there is nothing to revive.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded again, louder this time.
“Her organs are generally functional, but her brain has been erased. Sandra is brain-dead. Worse than that, actually.”
I felt like I was falling, but I locked my knees and stood ramrod straight. I also kept my voice even, despite every instinct within me, which wanted to scream and rave. I had to focus to speak calmly again.
“How can a person be worse than brain-dead?” I demanded. I wanted to scream at him. I began coming up with denials and rationalizations. I knew I was doing it, but I couldn’t help myself. “She has some kind of amnesia,” I said, “I understand that. People can usually work with that, they can recover. We have medical powers no one in the history of humanity has ever had. Just get her breathing and pumping her own heart again.”
“Those were my initial goals. Unfortunately, I failed. Neither the microbials nor the nanites are capable of creating new neural pathways, especially without knowing exactly which nerve-endings needed to be stimulated, or by how much, to cause the autonomic processes to continue.”
“I’m not getting it, Marvin,” I said. “People have lost their memories before. I understand she’d be a blank slate, but—”
“This level of brain damage goes far beyond simple amnesia. She has lost all her motor skills. Her brain doesn’t even know how to control her muscles. A toxin has eaten away her neural connections. The synaptic interconnection points between the neurons are gone. Her memories, her instincts, even her motor functions in the reptilian region are gone. She can’t breathe or make her heart beat without artificial aid because her brain has forgotten how to do these things. As an analogy, if she were a computer system, she would have a blank hard drive, blank memory and even blank ROM.”
“What can we do to help her?”
Marvin shifted his bulky body. He seemed to lean closer to me, to loom over me, and all around me. His cameras panned and zoomed.
“I’ve identified possibilities,” he said. “They all require that we start fresh. We could, in essence, use her cellular programming to create a new model.”
“Cellular programming? Are you talking about her DNA?”
“Exactly. Her DNA hasn’t been damaged. It contains everything we need to build new components. There would be several advantages to this approach.”
“Advantages?” I asked, stunned.
“I’ve identified two distinct methods,” Marvin continued. “The first would be to utilize a new brain, which could be transplanted into the existing unit’s cranium.”
I could tell he was becoming excited just by thinking about what he was saying. His tentacles were writhing with renewed vigor.
“A new brain?” I heard myself ask. “What, from a donor?”
“Not advisable. Rejection would be almost certain, and the mentality of the individual would be very dissimilar to the original Sandra—let us call her Sandra 1.0—even if we were able to manage the surgery.”
I stared at him. I was in a haze. I’d only felt like this once before in my life, when my wife had died in a car accident. A calm, soft-spoken doctor had proceeded to lay out the grim facts to me then as well, and I’d felt like the earth had opened up and sucked my guts down into a black hole under my feet.
“How…how else would you get a new brain, if not from a donor?”
“That’s where th
e project becomes interesting,” Marvin said. Now that he was fairly certain I wasn’t going to physically attack him, his tentacles had begun thrashing around with their normal vigor. “Within every human cell is the DNA required to build any element of the body, with the proper differentiation during development. Really, it’s an ingenious system.”
“Okay, so you want to grow a new brain for her?”
“Yes. That’s option one. Still, I don’t recommend it.”
“Besides the obvious absurdity of the proposal, why not?”
“There’s a time-factor. Even using chemical accelerants and hormone-therapy, an adult human brain that could operate her body would take years to grow. When we were finished, her body would be in an aged state, making the final surgery more difficult—”
“Okay, okay,” I said, “What’s option two?”
“Full replacement. I’ve gone over it many times, and really, it’s the only option.”
I took a few seconds to take this in. “You’re talking about cloning, right?”
“Yes.”
I looked at the feet in the tank. I couldn’t even see her face. “She’s already dead, isn’t she? She’s been dead for a week, and I’ve been fooling myself.”
“Essentially,” Marvin said, “but where there’s a will, there’s a way. And I’m fairly confident I can grow you a new Sandra. Let’s call the new unit Sandra 2.0.”
I shook my head. “But she would be a kid. The whole process would take years, wouldn’t it? She’d have to be born, grow up, go to school… She wouldn’t even be the same person.”
“I disagree,” Marvin said. “As a machine intellect, it’s possible I’m more comfortable with the concept of self-duplication. It would be Sandra, and much of her personality would be recognizable. I’ve delved into the topic, and according to the articles I’ve read on the internet, over seventy percent of human personality traits are due to innate neural structures. She wouldn’t have the same memories, of course, but she would look and behave in a very similar fashion.”
“But I would have to raise her as a little girl, right? That’s weird, Marvin. I would be old when she grew up, I couldn’t have the same kind of relationship with her that I have now.”
“Do you mean a sexual relationship?”
“Well…yes.”
“But you would have total control of her upbringing,” Marvin said brightly. “Why not prepare her appropriately? Youth is preferred when human leaders pick mates, as I understand it. Even if you were to select a new mate now, she’d probably be much younger than you. Statistically, political leaders—”
“Just shut up, Marvin. It’s not happening. Do you hear me? Forget about it. Come up with some other bizarre science experiment to sate your curiosity. Stop tormenting me in my grief. You’re going to have to leave Sandra alone.”
Marvin, I understood in that moment, was Frankenstein. He was a mad scientist fascinated by life and death. He wanted to create his own versions of both.
“But—Colonel Riggs, my intention was to eliminate your grief,” he said. “Is that not an honorable goal?”
“Yeah, maybe it is,” I said, “but not this time. Wanting to do something and having the power to do it doesn’t mean you should do it.”
“That’s not entirely logical.”
“I don’t care.”
“Could you explain it to me?” he asked.
I looked at him. I could tell that he really, honestly, wanted me to try to explain ethics to him. I knew I couldn’t so I didn’t bother to try.
“You’re a robot, Marvin. There are some things about us you’ll never fully understand.”
It took several minutes for Marvin to extricate himself from Sandra’s medical unit. After he’d finally managed it, I opened the hatch, kissed her forehead and said good-bye.
-37-
The next day I came to understand there was a curse upon my existence. The curse affected anything and anyone I came to love. These accursed individuals were doomed to die badly. All of them.
I’ve presided over more official Star Force funerals than I care to count. This one began no differently than a hundred others like it.
There was a somber crowd in perfectly creased smart uniforms. The medical unit, which had been designed to handily double as a coffin and disposal system, trundled down a preset path through the hold. We stood at attention as it passed us by. Kwon was at my side, as were Marvin and Dr. Swanson, but not Jasmine. She’d asked to come, but I’d ordered her to stay on the bridge. After all, we were only hours out from inevitable contact with the enemy.
I usually had uplifting words for my troops at these events, but I was an empty husk today. I fell back upon the classics, not knowing what else to do. I gave them our slightly edited version from the Book of Common Prayers:
“We commit her body to the stars; earth to earth; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless her and keep her, the Lord maketh his face to shine upon her and be gracious unto her and give her peace. Amen.”
Sandra’s coffin still had a long way to go. The nanites that were programmed to very gently propel it toward the launching tube weren’t speeding up on my account. Not wanting to make everyone stand around uncomfortably for several more minutes, I decided to force myself to speak further.
“Typically,” I began, saying the first words that came into my mind, “our Star Force members die their final deaths while fighting an alien machine. In this case, however, Sandra’s death was not due to a clean wound delivered by an enemy on the field of honor. Instead, she was taken from us by the assassin’s knife. A shot in the dark. Treachery.”
Up until this moment, everyone had been gazing at the coffin. They hadn’t been really listening to me, but were rather lost in their own thoughts. But I could tell that had changed. Heads swiveled to observe me.
I kept my eyes on Sandra’s face. I could still see her through a small, triangular window in the medical unit.
“I pulled the plug on her only minutes before this ceremony. The simple act of disconnecting her life-support was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I felt I had to, as she has been taken from us, even if this vessel she’s lived in so long still looks perfect to the eye. With help, perhaps I could keep it breathing and pumping blood forever. But I’m not going to do that.”
I turned toward Marvin, who looked dejected. His cameras drooped and his tentacles were still.
“And I’m not going to clone a new Sandra, or a new Sandra-brain, either.”
Only a single camera met my gaze. I turned back to the audience, who were looking at me with wide eyes now. They hadn’t heard about Marvin’s strange plans, apparently.
“For disconnecting you,” I said to the coffin, “I apologize, beloved.” She was passing me now, and the nearness of her form gave me an urge to save her, to push her from the tracks that bore her with relentless slowness toward the launch tubes. I stood firm, however, reminding myself she was well and truly dead.
“The third time was the charm, my love,” I said to her. “Perhaps your soul has been wanting to go all along. Maybe your time really came back when Alamo dropped you into the cold, cold ocean. Or when we found you in a coma in space. I’ve brought you back to life several times, but no more. You must find your own way—”
“Sir? Colonel Riggs, sir?”
My earpiece was buzzing. I recognized the voice: it was Captain Sarin. I decided to try to ignore her. The coffin was only about a minute from the launch tubes.
I paused and cleared my throat. “You must find your own way back to the stars from which we all came. Stardust to life, then back again. It is the cycle of the universe, the—”
“Colonel Riggs, I’m sorry,” Jasmine hissed into my earpiece. “There’s no need to respond. I must report, however, that the Macros have fired a huge barrage of missiles.”
I reached my hand up to my earpiece, and my face changed to a frown of concern. Everyone stared at me. I knew they suspected I was losing it. I
straightened up and tried to pull together my thoughts. The damned machines wouldn’t even let me bury my girlfriend in peace.
“Sandra,” I said, “we’re sending you back to the fires of this alien sun. The white star known as Thor will be your new home until such a time as your mass is transferred into space, and hopefully it will someday comprise a new living being. It is the immortality we know we all have: the immortality of the matter that forms our bodies. In the meantime, may God keep you.”
Someone began crying behind me. I thought it was Ensign Kestrel, but didn’t look back to find out. I watched the coffin enter the launch tube. There was a click, and a hiss. The tube was building pressure.
My final comment to her was made in a harsh whisper as the external door melted open and the light on the unit went from green to red.
“I’m going to find the man who ordered this, love,” I whispered, “and I’m going to kill him. I promise you that.”
I felt a darkness come over my heart and mind after the tube rumbled and released. With fantastic speed, the coffin shot sunward. I watched through the portal for a second or two, until she was lost from sight. I knew that Sandra herself could have probably tracked the projectile for a full minute, but my enhanced eyes had never been as good as hers.
A hand touched my shoulder. It was a soft touch. I turned and faced Dr. Kate Swanson.
“I’m so sorry, Kyle,” she said.
Then she hugged me. The move caught me by surprise. I looked around, and saw several of the females were crying. A few of the males looked misty-eyed as well. Maybe my eulogy, as lame as I thought it was, had gotten through to them.
Kwon was stepping from foot-to-foot, not knowing what to do with himself. He was no good to anyone in a situation that didn’t require shouting and shooting.
“That was a tough break, sir,” he said, talking over Dr. Swanson’s shoulder.
She was still clinging to me and squeezing me with grief. I didn’t feel sadness—not exactly. I was pissed off and in some kind of shock. But mostly, pissed off.
I patted Dr. Swanson with an overly-cautious hand. I didn’t want to damage the woman. She was being very supportive.