by M. D. Cooper
“It seems weird, sir,” Ouri said. “Why would they have those mercs ready to disrupt the VIP event if the nuke was supposed to have gone off? If it had, we certainly wouldn’t have been throwing any parties.”
“Don’t forget,” Lieutenant Amy Lee said, “the ball was supposed to happen four days earlier, but was postponed because one of the transports from Venus was delayed. They must have had the mercs on standby or called them back in after the nuke failed.”
“Right you are.” Tanis reached up to run her hand through her hair and was reminded that she currently didn’t have any. “Damn cover…” she muttered.
“It’s a good look for you, Major.” Evans grinned, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Gonna get your skin back?”
Tanis regarded him for a moment, tempted to spit a glob of metal over his mouth. She decided not to, but only because it abused and undermined her authority. It was still a close call.
“Yeah, I’m trying to get the procedure scheduled for tomorrow. I know I really can’t feel it, but I swear this stuff itches like mad.”
“So what’s our next move?” Terry Chang asked, steering the conversation back to the topic at hand.
“Well, we need to figure out who Trent works for. Hopefully some of this data”—Tanis gestured to the holo—“will help us out. That’s going to be you and you.” She gestured to Terry and Ouri. “You’ve got the lab AI and feel free to ask Angela for help as well; we’ve got to figure this thing out before we get hit again.”
Everyone regarded her seriously and nodded.
“I also noticed in your reports that there have been several anomalies lately.” Tanis brought up the pertinent data.
Ouri nodded. “We’ve had some little bits of sabotage on some inbound shipments. We’ve traced most of it back to various anti-colonist folks. Stuff from Earth is especially prone to being tampered with. The effects have been minor, but it’s the things that seem to be happening after cargo gets checked in that is upsetting me.”
Tanis had not read the reports in detail and signaled for Ouri to summarize as she scanned them.
“Well, we had one instance of some lithium being ‘misplaced’. It was put in a cargo pod when it was due for engineering. That was relatively benign. We’ve had some other instances of equipment that checked out fine upon arrival, but was broken when time came to use it. As much as I hate to say it, I think we have someone inside of our security curtain.”
“I’ll spend some time looking over various logs, but you folks know what to do there. See who was on, who was around, that sort of thing. Also, it’s possible that someone is managing to use someone else’s access. Check and see if there is anyone that seems to be in certain areas without going through any surrounding checkpoints.”
Ouri nodded. “Good call. I wasn’t going to do that since I didn’t think anyone could penetrate the exterior with fake credentials, but you’re right; once in, they could get to more benign areas with less overview.”
“Well, folks, you’ve been doing good work; I’ll leave you to continue it.” Tanis rose. “I’ve got to go face the firing squad now.”
“Otherwise known as Admiral Sanderson?” Evans asked.
“So he found out, did he?” Ouri asked.
Tanis grimaced. “He got back from Mars early and tried to find me for a progress report meeting. Apparently he wasn’t pleased that my progress had me elsewhere.”
ALTERED REALITY
STELLAR DATE: 3227204 / 09.08.4123 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Intrepid Mars Outer Shipyards (MOS)
REGION: Mars Protectorate, Sol Space Federation
Amanda awoke in slow stages. The first thing she noticed was that the sensations from her body felt dim, almost as though the entire thing was numb. The second thing was that she had no connection to the nets. The third was that she seemed to be paralyzed. Panic threatened to rise up in her mind, but she knew this would be the initial experience, and forced herself to calm.
“Hello Amanda, it’s good to see that you are awake—precisely on schedule too. You’ll notice that you have no net connection at present. We’ve done that to allow you to make an adjustment to the physical changes before we move on to the next stage.”
The voice belonged to Earnest and it was soothing in its confidence. She knew how the stages would progress, but it was nice of him to explain it again in case she didn’t remember immediately upon waking.
“I’m going to remove the muscle inhibitor now and allow you movement. I encourage you to move each of your limbs and your head before you attempt to open your eyes. You will not be able to speak at present, so don’t attempt to, as it may seem alarming.”
As feeling rushed into her limbs, Amanda was able to sense her position. She felt as though she was standing, though there was no weight on her feet. She first moved each toe, then rotated her ankles and then flexed each knee and leg separately.
“Very good,” Earnest sounded pleased. “All the movements were exactly as we rehearsed previously. Now bend your waist in each direction and then rotate your neck.”
Amanda did so and all of her muscles behaved exactly as they should have, with smooth precision. The next step was to move her arms and hands; they also behaved exactly as they should have, her body seemed to still be perfectly attuned to her mind.
“Everything looks good so far,” Earnest said, and Amanda could tell he was smiling; his tone was always different when he did. “Now I’m going to have you open your eyes. Things may look odd, but that’s to be expected.”
Amanda did as instructed, and saw Earnest before her, the smile she had suspected resting upon his lips. He was looking at a holo display, which flashed dozens of readouts and scrolled various status columns along its periphery. He was right, her vision did look rather off. It was like all the color had been sucked out of everything. Even Earnest was a dimmer color, his skin looking sallow and grey.
She looked down at herself, and though she knew what to expect, was still shocked to see it. To begin with, her skin—that is to say her artificial epidermis—was a smooth, alabaster white. At a glance it appeared to be a high gloss plastic, or perhaps even ceramic, but it was flexible and behaved much like skin, except that it never seemed to wrinkle at the folds. It remained smooth and tight whether a limb was bent or straight.
Earnest had mentioned earlier that it was a new creation of his. It had all the properties of flesh in that it was self-repairing, drew its energy from her body’s metabolism and was just as sensitive and flexible as skin.
His addition was that, for all intents and purposes, it was indestructible. He had tested it at temperatures up to ten thousand degrees Kelvin and not only did it survive, but protected whatever it was encompassing. When she had expressed amazement at the polymer, he had waved it off as though it was not terribly important. She knew dozens of companies had spent centuries trying to develop something half as good as her new skin.
However, shiny white flesh wasn’t the strangest part of her physical alteration. While her entire body was still present and able to move, she was unable to actually leave her current location. Below her was a plinth, broad at the base and then narrowing in its middle until it widened out again to smoothly merge with her body. It was like she was sitting on a stool that was molded to her, and thus her to the ship.
She planted her feet and tried to rise experimentally. The sensation was odd, almost as though she was pulling on a limb that had gone numb. It occurred to her suddenly that she would go a long time without ever experiencing physical sex in this predicament. Though from what Earnest said, he expected her to work only 90 day shifts.
The reason for that was twofold: the first was that the ship’s avatar would not sleep, and, while it was possible to go far beyond 90 days without sleep with the right brain chemistry alterations, she would be under considerable strain. The second was that in order to maintain her solid relation to humanity, she needed downtime amongst the crew—time when she could
be normal…well, as normal as a white skinned, black eyed mannequin-esque creature could be.
During her down-time, she would not be on the plinth and would have freedom of movement. Hopefully 90 days without sex was possible. She couldn’t remember ever actually achieving it, but was sure that others had managed. Besides, once she was fully activated, she could achieve any physical and mental state she desired. Any feeling or sensation would be available.
“I imagine that must feel very curious,” Earnest said, referring to her attempt to stand. “Especially with the neural connections to the ship not yet activated.”
Amanda smiled and Earnest proceeded to inform her that he was going to activate her network connections. This would be the first stage of three mental connections they would make.
The only part of her physical appearance that had not changed was her hair. It was, however, new and updated. Her previous set, though top of the line, was far outdone by what Earnest had fitted her with. Each strand had the throughput of her entire previous set, allowing for the broadest connection possible to the nets.
She could have sworn she felt a tingle in her scalp as Earnest activated the connection. Her auth tokens passed to the shipnet with blinding speed and the available bandwidth seemed unlimited. With her neural augmentations, Amanda was able to focus on over a thousand things at once. The feeling was indescribable; the only thing that kept her from losing herself on the net was the knowledge that this was the least of the mental enhancements.
“You seem to be smoothly tuning into all available data. Let me increase the flow.”
The feeling was akin to having her mind stretched, pulled, and inflated. It was pure ecstasy. She threw her head back and her mouth fell open as she forgot about her physical body.
“Well, there go your serotonin levels, spiking like there’s no tomorrow. I guess it’s good to like your work.”
“People wouldn’t be able to afford this,” Earnest said. “Some governments probably couldn’t afford this.”
He looked over the readings for several minutes, while Amanda simultaneously read seventeen novels and watched ninety vids.
“Ok, finish up on your little demonstration there. I’m going to activate your physical systems now.”
There was a flash and then Amanda’s vision cleared. No longer did things look grey and bland. Now they were more vibrant and vivid than ever. Yet, the colors raced with information. Earnest’s skin had binary code in it that she could read; it told her of the skin’s makeup, temperature, perspiration levels, nano-calories burned per square millimeter. It was unbelievable. Everything around her was draped in knowledge, information poured in from every visible source. Looking down at herself, she was sheathed in light.
No longer was her skin a simple porcelain white, but it flowed with symbols, representations of her thoughts and feelings, it was as though she was wearing her mind. No one else could see it unless she allowed their personal holo to visualize it, but it was beautiful nonetheless. She granted Earnest access to the display and he smiled.
“That looks fantastic. Needless to say, your personal holo emitters are working perfectly. Ship connection will be coming online any moment, brace for it.”
She was lucky he said that, lucky also, that she was physically molded to the plinth, or she probably would have fallen to the deck. Her little trick with the novels and vids seems trivial now as a flood of information from the ship rushed into her.
Now instead of her limbs feeling real and the plinth feeling like a numb appendage, the sensations reversed. Her limbs now felt like a collection of little toes and her real arms and legs flexed and extended through a thousand sensors and data collection systems.
“Attenuate,” Earnest said. “Read sector by sector, or system by system. Get used to it in increments, or you’ll drown in it.”
Amanda did as instructed, then happened to notice the time. They had been at this for hours, yet somehow it had seemed to rush past her; maybe she was savoring in the experiences a bit too much. But really, how often does a girl get to have her mind literally blown?
After a time, she got the hang of reading the ship’s systems, and had greeted many of the other AI on board. It was different here, when she met the AI it was on their plane, not the standard webs and nets on which humans interfaced with them. She saw them in their places, where they expressed their thoughts with mathematical equations that would take a lifetime to write down by hand, or with entire fictional histories made cyber-reality just to represent a notion or idea. She even met some who used equations that plotted the paths of subatomic particles just as a mode of greeting. Yet through it all, Intrepid was nowhere to be found.
She knew it was on purpose, so that they wouldn’t bump into each other before her merging with it, or blending, or whatever it would be. But it felt like there was a vast emptiness in the ship without him.
“Stage three.” Earnest said. “He’s ready and willing if you are.”
And he was there. In her mind, a part of her mind. Over the shipnet and across all of the public nets on the MOS and even across parts of the Mars 1 ring. A pair of voices rode across the data streams, a crescendo that expressed itself as only a gasp of astonishment and understanding.
Earnest looked slightly dazed as he looked at Amanda and then around him. “Well that was slightly unexpected.”
Amanda couldn’t respond yet, didn’t want to. She and Intrepid were intertwined, both startled and amazed by the revelations provided by the mixing of their modes of thought. Organic and inorganic, both powerful and augmented minds, both able to complete so many of the questions and quandaries that had never been resolved for either. The intuitive leap of one mind was the staggering dilemma of the other. The logical path of one was to the other a tangled web of unlikelihood.
Intrepid responded,
They spoke over the net, though they didn’t need to. It was for Earnest’s edification, so he could get a glimpse of their rapport.
“So I guess it worked,” he said wryly, and Amanda detected a hint of jealousy in his voice.
Amanda attempted to make a sarcastic snort by way of reply, and the action caused her chest to convulse uncomfortably.
There was a long silence and then a roar sounded on the shipnet.
“I’m glad for that,” Earnest said. “If I could count all of the hum-dingers I’ve wasted on you….”
Abby strode into the lobby and around the temporary partitions which shielded Amanda fr
om any passersby during the process. Amanda knew she was coming, had felt her signal hop from wireless node to node as she moved through the ship. It was amazing, almost as though the people moving through the Intrepid were a tickling sensation along her spine.
“I see that things are going well. Mind you, people on Mars know things are going well with all the racket you’re making. If you could stop multicasting all the time….”
“Well, enjoy your bonding time; the captain wants to meet you shortly.”
Previously, the thought of meeting the captain of a ship like this would have left her concerned and worried. Now, with Intrepid in her mind, she felt nothing but confidence.
RELATIONSHIPS
STELLAR DATE: 3227211/ 09.15.4123 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Intrepid, Mars Outer Shipyards (MOS)
REGION: Mars Protectorate, Sol Space Federation
Tanis and Commander Evans were relaxing in the officer’s mess, enjoying a bit of time away from the SOC and a few of the perks of rank. Tanis had to admit that she was enjoying Evans’ company quite a bit of late. She had even privately admitted to herself that if they weren’t both military she would consider pursuing him—maybe it would be possible after they got underway and were no longer officially in the military. In the meantime, she would take what time in his easygoing company she could.
“So how are things looking out there?” Tanis asked before taking a bite of her sandwich.
“Tidy as you could dream. Not a single ship is deviating a millimeter from its plotted course.” Evans leaned back in his chair and took a long drink from the cup of coffee in front of him.