The Girl With Acrylic Eyes

by Greg Krojac

  She watched as the light got even closer, and realised that it was some kind of spacecraft, but unlike anything that she had seen before. The Carl Sagan and the deGrasse Tyson had been state-of-the-art vehicles when she had left Earth, but this looked nothing like either of them. Firstly, it was very sleek, almost sinewy in design. Whereas the spacecraft that Coppélia had travelled on had been of a very functional appearance, with little concern for aesthetics, this vehicle looked as if aerodynamics had been a major factor in its design. The light that she had seen was – now that it was closer – quite obviously a searchlight. This made more sense to the android, as the planet had little to no atmosphere with which to provide friction and burn up an entering object. Suddenly, she was bathed in a beam of light, reddish in hue, and the small spacecraft hovered above her for a few seconds, before darting away back into the darkness of space.

  She was just about to take up her position in front of the deGrasse Tyson to absorb what solar rays the dwarf star could spare when she heard a noise. She turned to see the source of the pulsating hum and saw a similar craft to that which had hovered above her a little earlier. However, this one was significantly larger and actually landed on the planet’s surface, about two hundred metres away from her. Two distractions within the space of a few minutes was more than she could have hoped for. She studied the spacecraft for a minute or so, trying to make out what was written on the side of the vehicles and wondering who – or what – could be inside. Was this an alien species who had visited Proxima b to carry out their own research? Would they be friendly or hostile to her?

  A doorway opened up about halfway along the hull of the spacecraft and a ramp of some sort stretched out until it made contact with the ground. She saw three figures appear at the opening and then make their way down the ramp. They appeared to be humanoid in appearance but, whoever they were, Coppélia hoped that they’d be her ticket off the planet; 35,947 days was plenty long enough to have seen everything that she wanted to see. As they got closer to her, Coppélia could see that the visitors were indeed human. If she’d had a heart, it would surely have beaten faster with anticipation, but she simply waited calmly until they were standing in front of her.

  Two of the visitors wore space-suits, but – unlike those of nearly ninety years ago – they weren’t bulky at all. If it weren’t for the space-helmets that they were wearing, their apparel could almost be considered a fashion statement – one suit being mustard yellow, one being petrol blue, and one being emerald green. But what was surprising was that one of the strangers wasn’t even wearing a helmet. The one in the petrol blue space-suit offered a gloved hand to the android, whose good manners obliged her to return the gesture. The first words that Coppélia had heard for sixty-eight Earth years that weren’t pre-recorded (since a second solar flare destroyed the landing shuttle’s communications system) fired up her aural receiving software that had lain dormant for so long and broke the silence inside her head.

  “Are you Coppélia?”

  The android’s aural receptors bathed in the sound that they had just heard, and she responded with a voice that she hadn’t used for over eighty-seven years.

  “Yes. I’m Coppélia. But who are you?”

  Coppélia could tell from the voice that she was definitely speaking to a woman, but she couldn’t see her features clearly due to the heavily tinted visor of the helmet. The woman spoke but – although Coppélia wasn’t aware – her lips didn’t move. All Coppélia knew was that words were being received by her aural hardware.

  “My name is Holly, and this to my left is Simon. To my right is –.”

  Coppélia interrupted Holly.

  “Franz. He’s an android.”

  Holly looked surprised.

  “How do you know his name? How do you know he’s not human?”

  Coppélia thought a white lie would be better than an explanation at the moment. She just wanted to get off the planet, and nothing could be done for the bodies in the crashed spaceship; she wouldn’t be breaking any of the Laws. In fact, she’d be upholding the Third Law and protecting her own existence.

  “A lucky guess regarding the name, and as for knowing he’s an android? He has no helmet.”

  Holly didn’t press Coppélia for further explanation – her mission was to rescue Coppélia.

  “He’s a sophont, actually.”

  Coppélia had never encountered the term.

  “A sophont?”

  “Yes. When sapient androids such as you were given protective rights fifty years ago, they were also given the name sophont to differentiate between them and androids with less reasoning capacity. It’s a term coined by a science fiction writer of the mid-nineteen sixties, Poul Anderson.”

  The sophont introduced himself.

  “Good day, Coppélia. My name is Franz.”

  “Like in the ballet that shares my name?”

  “Yes. Exactly like in the ballet.”

  For a moment Coppélia’s memory banks took her back almost a century to the time that her friend Karen had taken her to see the ballet that she had been named after. It had been a wonderful evening. Coppélia hoped that the answer to her next question would be what she had waited almost a century to hear.

  “Have you come to take me home?”

  “We have, Coppélia. Just follow us up the ramp and you’ll be on your way back to planet Earth.”

  Coppélia was so happy but, unable to weep tears of joy – a human paradox – she hugged Holly instead.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  Fifty kilometres away, in another valley, another fully recharged Coppélia watched as Holly's space shuttle took to the skies with Coppélia on board on the first leg of its journey home. If the trapped android had been human her heart would have sunk. She turned around and walked back to her Space Lander to continue waiting and hoping that a rescue ship would be sent for her one day soon.

  Coppélia had never seen anything like the inside of the Explorer class shuttle. The interior walls of the spacecraft were a peaceful shade of pastel blue, and the instrumentation was minimalistic at least. There was an eerie sense of familiarity about the vehicle but Coppélia said nothing. Holly bade Coppélia sit down, abandoning the telepathic comms system that they had used on the planet in favour of oral communication. The android could see nowhere to sit.

  “Where should I sit, Holly? There’s nothing there.”

  Holly grinned.

  “Sorry. My bad. Of course, you wouldn’t know.”

  She turned to Franz.

  “Franz, please show Coppélia how the seats work.”

  “Of course, Captain.”

  The sophont leant against the wall of the ship and the area of the wall against which he was leaning shape-shifted into a seat, perfectly contoured to provide excellent posture and support – not so important for androids but essential for the human body. Coppélia followed Franz’s lead and was soon sitting quite comfortably alongside him. Holly went to sit down on thin air, and Coppélia was concerned that she would fall to the floor when a seat and control console suddenly appeared to grow out of the floor. Holly tapped a couple of touch-screens and the shuttle eased its way off Proxima b’s surface, before accelerating away from the planet into deep space.

  Three minutes later, the wall at the front of the shuttle seemed to melt away and Coppélia could see outside the ship. In front of them was a much larger space-ship, a scaled up version of the shuttle that she was sitting in. It occurred to her that the design was also identical to the first, small ship that had hovered above her, back on the planet. Simon explained.

  “The ships are like Russian dolls that you might see in a museum. The design is the most efficient; it would be illogical to change the design of each type of ship. So the drone – that’s what found you on the planet’s surface – looks like the larger shuttle craft, which we’re on now. And the shuttle craft looks like the main Explorer class space cruiser, which you can see before us. In a moment, the ba
y door will open and we’ll enter the bowels of the mother-ship.”

  Coppélia was fascinated by the advances in technology that had taken place in her enforced absence.

  “How does this melting technology work? I mean, things appear and disappear as and when you need them. The seats and your console, for example.”

  Franz interjected.

  “May I?”

  Simon nodded his permission and Franz continued.

  “Coppélia, there have been great technological advances whilst you have been away. One of them is in a field called Claytronics, which combines nanoscale robotics and computer science to create individual nanometer-scale computers. These computers are known as claytronic atoms, or – more commonly – catoms. These catoms work together to create tangible three-dimensional objects – such as the seat you’re sitting on or the Captain’s console – that humans and, of course, we sophonts can interact with. I myself am a collection of catoms assembled into the form of a humanoid android. Indeed, although the technology was in its infancy when you were created, there are elements of your construction which owe a lot to the Claytronic concept.”

  A hole appeared in the side of the main ship, the Sir Isaac Newton, and the shuttle craft entered it. As soon as the shuttle was safe inside the mother ship, the hole resealed itself as if by magic. Holly, Simon, Franz and Coppélia disembarked and six maintenance droids checked the condition of the shuttle before an interior wall opened up and the shuttle was guided inside. Then the wall closed again.

  Holly turned to Coppélia.

  “I’m guessing the damage to your eye and that arm was caused by a solar flare?”

  The android nodded.

  “It happened a few days before I was due to leave the planet. A flare licked my face and stroked my left arm. I think I must have been right at the weak fringe of the flare but it still had the power to blind my right eye, and destroy any mobility in my left arm.”

  “Right. the first thing we’re going to do is to get you repaired. We’ll take you to TechShop and you’ll be fitted with replacement parts for your damaged eye and arm. Our Cosmetic Technicians will then replenish your skin where necessary. It won’t take long to fix you up and you’ll be as good as new by the time TechShop has finished with you. Once that’s done, I’d like to see you privately in my quarters. I have something I want to show you.”

  The repairs at TechShop were done at speed and with great efficiency. Coppélia once again looked as she did on the day she was first activated. Her skin was perfect, her arm fully-functioning, and her right eye had been replaced with a perfect copy of the original. Franz collected her once the repairs were completed to escort her to Captain Holly’s private quarters. Although she could feel no momentum, Coppélia had a feeling that the Sir Isaac Newton was underway, heading back to Earth.

  “Are we moving, Franz?”

  “Yes, we are travelling at light-speed.”

  Coppélia was impressed. The fastest she had been able to travel on her journey to Proxima b had been 30% light-speed, and even then the Carl Sagan had been obliged to turn 180 degrees halfway through the journey and begin decelerating immediately so that it could arrive at the planet at a slow enough speed to despatch the landing shuttle, the deGrasse Tyson, to the surface.

  “What is the form of propulsion?”

  Franz enjoyed talking with a peer.

  “I’ll transfer the schematics and data to your memory banks, but the short version of the explanation is that we use proton energy. Imagine, if you will, that we are a giant vacuum cleaner. We suck in protons through a large nozzle at the front of the spacecraft which are then processed and forced into a smaller exhaust tube, where they are compressed. When they are expelled at the rear of the ship the increased energy propels the ship forwards. In this way, we are able to attain light-speed. We will arrive at Earth in approximately 4.24 Earth years.”

  4.24 years was nothing to an android, but to a human, it was still a substantial amount of time. Coppélia wondered how the humans dealt with such long distance travel. Simon was happy to explain.

  “Three months into the journey, the human members of the crew are put into stasis and hibernate until we are three months away from our destination. So, on this journey, they will sleep for 3.75 years. There are twenty-five human crew members and seven sophont crew members, like me. We sophonts run the ship whilst the humans hibernate.”

  Coppélia remembered the nervousness and anxiety towards Artificial Intelligence when she was first assembled.

  “Do the humans not worry that the sophonts might mutiny and take over the ship whilst they’re sleeping?”

  Franz looked confused.

  “Take over the ship? What a bizarre thought. Why would we want to do that?”

  The wall outside Captain Holly’s quarters melted, allowing Coppélia to enter. Safely sealed inside the room, Holly offered the android a seat that wasn’t there. Coppélia had learnt from seeing Holly on the shuttle-craft and started to sit down on the empty space below her. The floor came up to meet her and provided a comfortable seat opposite the Captain. A space was left empty between the two of them. Holly waved a hand and a holograph materialised. It turned away from the Captain and faced Coppélia.

  The android saw an elderly woman before her, frail of physique but the eyes still held a sparkle. The woman looked strangely familiar as she spoke.

  “Hello, Coppélia. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to greet you in person but, as you can see, I’m not as young as I once was.”

  Coppélia looked closer at the figure.

  “Karen? Is that you?”

  The figure continued, having correctly assumed what Coppélia’s response would be.

  “Yes, Coppélia. It’s me, Karen.”

  The android looked at Holly, questioningly.

  “Is Karen still alive?”

  Holly shook her head.

  “I’m sorry Coppélia, but she passed away fourteen years ago, at the age of one hundred and twelve.”

  The hologram, being unaware of any questions that Coppélia may ask during transmission, kept talking.

  “I’ll let whichever of my descendants found you explain the details, but suffice to say, I had no idea that the plan was to abandon you on that planet. If I had, I would have done my best to prevent you from leaving Earth. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault, Karen. You didn’t know.”

  “Once I found out what Raef had done, our marriage hit the rocks. But he went missing and was presumed dead, whilst returning from the Mars colonies. When his body was found, I inherited his company and his fortune.

  “Under my guidance, the company prospered – in a more ethical manner – and I passed onto each of my children the quest to rescue you from your solitary prison on Proxima b. They, in turn, did the same with their children. I would have loved to have fetched you home sooner – I sent messages every week – but I also had company board members to deal with and wasn’t able to accelerate a rescue mission. The other board members wouldn’t allow the release of funds to bring you home. But my descendants were always aware of my desire to rescue you and now it has happened.”

  Coppélia looked at Holly. She could see a resemblance that she hadn’t spotted before.

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. I’m Karen’s great-granddaughter.”

  Karen was oblivious to the interruptions.

  “I have a feeling it’s Holly that found you. She was always the more adventurous one.”

  Holly nodded.

  “Yes Nan, Now we have the technology, nothing was going to stop me.”

  “So, Coppélia. I wish I could have been there with you, but we humans are still afflicted with mortality and it was not to be. But you are in good hands. I know how much you like learning things the old-fashioned way and you have so much to learn about your new life. You’ll make new friends, see new things, experience new technologies – you’ll love that. I ask only one thing of you when you return to Ea
rth. Please go and see a performance of the ballet Coppélia. I cannot be there with you in person, but I will be with you in spirit. Goodbye, my friend. I love you.”

  Coppélia felt sad that she hadn’t been able to be reunited with her friend but happy that Karen had never forgotten her. Holly allowed her a couple of minute’s silent contemplation and then rested her hand on the android’s shoulder.

  “We have to go now – we humans need to prepare for stasis. But you can stay with Franz and the rest. They can bring you up to speed on how things are on Earth nowadays. A lot has changed since you were last there.”

  Five years later, Coppélia settles herself into a seat at the NewMet City Ballet Theatre. The orchestra strikes up and the curtain rises to show a festival in progress to celebrate the imminent arrival of a new town bell. The audience consists of about 70% humans and 30% sophonts. Coppélia looks to her right and smiles at her companion, Karen, at age twenty-eight, the age that she was when Coppélia last saw her alive.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Greg Krojac was born in 1957 and grew up in Maidenhead, Berkshire. He is the author of six published novels: the Recarn Chronicles trilogy (comprising of Revelation, Revolution, and Resolution), Reality Sandwich, The Schrödinger Enigma, and The Girl With Acrylic Eyes.

  He currently lives just outside the city of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil.

  www.gregkrojac.com

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  REVELATION

  PART 1 of THE RECARN CHRONICLES TRILOGY

  Thomas McCall wants power – absolute power. The Illuminati gives him that opportunity and when he attains the position of Pindar, the head of the Illuminati, he is determined to keep it forever.