by Mark Iles
*****
“The only way to describe it is to imagine the whole process is like a camera snapshot,” Arthur said, reclining in one of the chairs in the Admiral’s office. “You can only record your experiences and knowledge up to the specific moment of the upload, although of course you can update it later on. Everything that happens after that is lost forever. You also need to understand the old Arthur died and I’m a completely fresh one, but Arthur I am. Naturally because I am a new being I can only be responsible for things that have happened since my rebirth, certainly not before.” He glanced at his three old companions and raised a questioning ceramic eyebrow. “Hey,” he noted, “you’ve all been promoted.”
“And awarded medals,” Singh replied.
Arthur looked toward the Admiral. “Does that make me a Lieutenant Commander then, Sir?”
Van Pluy looked straight back at him. “You were promoted to that rank, yes, and also awarded the Military Cross.”
Arthur’s ceramic face gave an unnerving grin. “Brilliant, thanks!”
“But that was the old Arthur,” Van Pluy replied dryly, “which means you’re still a lieutenant.” Ignoring the sapphire stare, the Admiral continued. “So how come we knew nothing of this technology? It’s not just the personality download, storage and transfer of the programme that enables it but also the robotic body you’re in. The fact your face can make expressions is…well, bizarre to be honest. Oh, and incidentally, you do know anything you create while serving in the military belongs to the service, right? Yes, I want that research, Lieutenant, and I want it now.”
Arthur tapped his head. “Some of it is up here, Sir, but I need to rebuild the equipment I had and figure out a lot of it again, particularly what went wrong, and then make a few tweaks. I stored all the data on Henry and he was destroyed, remember? I can recreate it of course, but it will take quite a while. Oh, and Singh,” he turned to his colleague, “as I recall, you owe me a month’s wages.”
Singh’s gaze flickered towards Selena, who raised her eyebrows at him.
“Ah, yeah, I’d forgotten about that. This doesn’t prove anything at all, you cheated.” Singh replied. “Besides, as the admiral says, that was the old Arthur.” He looked at Selena and gave a nonchalant shrug. “I know you don’t like gambling, Ma’am but, believe it or not, we had a bet as to whether there was life after death. That was after a few of those cocktails my ancestor invented. The long and the short of it is Arthur bet me a month’s wages he would be able to prove there’s life after death, by coming back from it himself. As far as I’m concerned this is cheating.”
“Singh’s right, this isn’t proof of life after death,” Kes interjected, “apart from the fact your personality hasn’t improved much, you did cheat.”
“Besides,” Singh added, “what would you need money for? You’re a robot.”
“Upgrades, repairs, new bodies...”
“Am I the only one who thinks this is weird?” Kes muttered under his breath.
Arthur looked from the Admiral to Selena and back again. “Could someone tell me what happened during the battle?”
“After the attack on Mantis we escaped in the lifeboat,” Selena replied. “Just as we hit hyperspace we took a couple of direct hits aft and started to lose power. We’d just channelled everything we had left to the engines to get us the hell out of there when a final shot slipped through the shields. There was an explosion and Samantha was killed. Singh and Bryn managed to set us down on a nearby planet but I was knocked out. When I woke I saw you lying next to Samantha. There was a gun in your hand and a bullet hole in Za’an’s forehead, so it looks like you got your revenge after all. We buried the four of you next to a large pond in the forest where we crashed. You’d have liked it. It was a lovely spot and very peaceful, but it’s all gone now. The planet was destroyed by meteorites and the shockwaves from the destruction of the Mantis system, shortly after we left.”
Arthur was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I’m sorry to hear about the others, but obviously I’m not about Za’an. That bastard got off lightly.”
“Moving on, how do we know you are who you say you are?” Van Pluy asked. “Apart from your bet with Singh, of course. A little more evidence would help.”
Arthur turned to the Admiral. “Does Project Juliette ring any bells? It was the code name for my work on the deflector screens that’s hopefully has since been adapted for the battle stations. I initially used the technology during the rebel attack on Loreen.”
Van Pluy nodded steadily. “Okay, but how you achieved all of this is beyond me. So, you remember nothing at all about the attack on Mantis?”
“I rarely sleep, Sir, and had to find something to occupy my mind. With regard to your last question, I don’t remember a thing. The only memories I have are up until the moment before we began our attack.”
Selena, the admiral and the others all fired questions at Arthur, until they were finally in no doubt he was indeed who he claimed to be. As the questions trailed off, the admiral said, “Okay, we’re going to run with this. Arthur, you’re back in Captain Dillon’s team, at least for the time being. We have an urgent job on and she’s going to need your expertise but I’m going to need you back here once things settle down, working on those robotic bodies and other research in a fully staffed and secure lab. In the meantime, Franks’s and Amanda’s daughter is missing. She’s somewhere down those damn tunnels and we have to find her. Do you any ideas where she might be?”
His eyes like twin plasma torches, Arthur replied, “Actually, Sir, yes I do. I guess it’s time to go down the proverbial rabbit hole and back to Eden.”
*****
“If Arthur can rediscover that knowledge,” the Admiral said quietly to Selena, as they stood in the skimmer looking out at the lush, green forests slipping past below them, “can you imagine the benefits to both medicine and the military? Death would no longer be an issue, and when our troops are killed we could remake them into robot armies. Of course there’s still the issue of Za’an’s murder. I’m obviously not happy about it but we need to move on.”
“While we’re on the subject,” Selena turned to face the admiral more fully. “Za’an was a murderous scumbag and he deserved to die. For your information I gave Arthur permission to kill him, but only when we’d completed the mission and gotten out of it in one piece. For what it’s worth I don’t regret giving him permission, or the fact he carried it out, one bit. Za’an was a complete psychopath, who cut up his victims then kept their body parts which he ate at his leisure. Arthur gave me his word he’d wait and he stuck to our deal, he always does. I have no problem at all with what he did.”
“Why is it I get the feeling that if Arthur hadn’t killed Za’an then he would have met an accident somewhere anyway?” Van Pluy reached up and patted his left breast pocket, as if to pluck free a cigar from the packet he always kept there. Then he changed his mind, ran fingers over his greying eyebrows and spoke so that everyone could hear. “Okay, you’re no longer under arrest, Jones. The matter is closed. We need to focus on the search for Hope and her parents.”
Arthur turned his ghostly face towards the Admiral. “Thank you, Sir. I’ve finished the upgrades on the bees and they’re up and running. They’ve already searched several sites of interest. The thing that concerns me is a few of them haven’t returned. One can only assume there are some defences within the rabbit holes which are, for some reason, eradicating my little pets.”
“Bees, as in honey?” Kes asked, scanning the passing foliage.
“Actually they’re tiny bots that look like flying insects,” Van Pluy replied. “Arthur here designed the initial ones years ago. Since then he’s just added a few extra algorithms.”
“Of course he has,” Kes replied. “A regular miracle worker isn’t he.”
Ignoring him the admiral continued. “We hoped to use them to investigate Eden’s worlds but, for the time being, it seems the ForeRunner’s are intent on keeping their secrets. S
elena, I want your team to go to the site where Franks’s and co were last and take charge of the rescue mission. We’ve a family to find. In the meantime, Arthur, as I said before you retain the rank of Lieutenant. That means you get to follow orders. Is that understood?”
“Perfectly, Admiral,” Arthur replied.
“We’ve arrived,” Van Pluy ignored Arthur, as the craft finally slowed and settled on the grass.
Selena and the others shouldered their weapons and strode purposely down the slim, metal plank that slid from the side of the skimmer and looked up at the imposing forested hillside before them. The path up it wasn’t as long as Selena remembered but they were still breathing a little heavily by the time they reached the cave’s entrance. She was surprised at the lack of defences and turned to the admiral, but he cut in before a word could leave her lips.
“I know what you’re thinking, if this site’s so important why isn’t it better defended? Think about it, if the enemy managed to invade, then whatever defences we had here wouldn’t last long anyway. If anything they’d give the site away. By having nothing here at all, it makes this place harder to discover and so protects it.”
“That makes sense,” Selena replied, looking again at the ocean view visible over the tree tops. She was worried about Van Pluy. The realisation of how much he’d aged shocked her.
“You ready yet?” the admiral asked a few moments later, before bracing himself and striding into the dark cave that now loomed before them.
Following him, Selena and the others looked around and then pulled up short. The Silver-coloured wall blocking their progress hadn’t been there the last time they were here: nor had the auto-guns on the walls that were whirring gently as they tracked their progress. The admiral pressed his hand against a plate in a hidden recess. His prints and DNA confirmed, he typed an access code one-handed into a keyboard that slide out of the wall, while it also scanned his retina. Finally a door appeared in front of them and slid aside to reveal the chamber they remembered so well.
“That wall’s made of the same material as the ForeRunner barrier in here,” Van Pluy said as they stepped through. “We finally managed to analyse and reproduce it. It's tough stuff and can’t be detected. Well, at least with anything we have, which makes it ideal for keeping this place secure and under wraps.”
They walked through into the inner chamber, where even the Admiral’s ID was checked by two stern-faced sergeants while even more auto-guns and several armed men kept them covered. Satisfied, one of the sergeants stepped back and saluted Van Pluy.
“Welcome back, Admiral.”
“Thank you, Baines. If you will?”
The sergeant made a hand gesture to the men on the right side of the room. There had been a control pedestal there once and the pile of rocks in front of it was now replaced by a wooden, intricately carved frame, one that bore the Penal Regiment crest of a black flying eagle on a white background reaching for unknown prey surrounded by a dark-blue circle.
Selena looked to the grey-metal barrier in front of them. The memory of seeing it for the first time a few years previously, with Bryn and the others, brought a moment’s heartache. She forced Bryn from her mind as, once again, a hole appeared in the barrier and it spiralled away. Although she remembered this all so well, the brilliantly lit passageway leading down into the depths of the hillside still gave her pause. It had a warm, welcoming and heart-stopping beauty that simply took one’s breath away.
“I’ll leave you here, Captain,” the admiral stopped short. “I’ve got far too much to do back at the shack, as much as I’d love to come with you. I’ll see you all when you return. Good luck. Find Hope and the others, and bring them back safely.”
The admiral turned abruptly and walked away, leaving them to walk down the sloping, silky tunnel.
“This place freaks me out,” Singh observed. “It’s unnatural. There’s doesn’t appear to be a light source, yet we can see everything so clearly.”
Four inches taller than Selena’s five foot two inches, she had to look up at Singh as he spoke.
“Yeah,” Kes agreed, “and the air’s here’s so fresh, which is remarkable considering it had been sealed for God knows how long before we opened it.”
At the end of the tunnel lay another barrier, more guards and several pod-mounted auto-guns. With a glance at the coverall-clad Arthur the guards eyes widened. Then they checked their ID’s and, satisfied, they opened the entrance and ushered them through.
Selena and the others exited through the bole of a huge tree and found themselves standing ankle-high in thick green grass, looking up at a clear blue sky and the vast overhead canopy of the tree behind them. One of the first things they noticed was the warm, gentle wind kissing their faces, bringing with it the vibrant scent of wild flowers. Fruit trees flourished about them, their leaves moving gently in the breeze. Blackberry bushes brimmed with fruit bursting with juices. Selena had a momentary vision of Bryn striding up to a tree and quickly picking an apple, sinking his teeth into it before she could object. The sudden memory bought another sad smile and again she shook it away.
Braxis came to a halt besides her. “Holy shit!” he gasped, staring in disbelief at the scenery.
“Been studying poetry, have we?” Singh asked the barrel-chested trooper.
“How can we walk down a tunnel and end up in a different world?” Braxis asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“There are a lot of things here that don’t make sense,” Selena replied, walking into the clearing towards the base camp, while checking her weapon.
Like the Citadel back on Loreen, the camp in front of them increased in size and now clearly housed several hundred people, yet the tent-city pitched in the forest clearing had an ordered look about it. Skimmers zipped back and forth between the thick tree trunks, carrying stores and scores of uniformed and plain-clothed people on myriad tasks. The sheer hustle and bustle of it all spoke of the enormous resources being committed and used here in an attempt to discover more about the ForeRunners and Eden itself.
A soldier clad in black combats approached them and saluted Selena. He looked older than the average trooper. “Captain Dillon?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“Can you come with me please, Ma’am? I have transport waiting.”
The man quickly led them to a skimmer and, once they were aboard, the craft rose swiftly to several hundred feet and then tilted, before swooping to one side and shooting forward. The small stubby craft accelerated rapidly, until the forest below became a blur. In no time at all it was slowing again and they stopped in mid-air, turned and settled on the ground between huge trees towering far overhead. Braxis’s mouth fell open at the sight of the hundreds of tunnels coming out of those massive trunks.
“Ye Gods,” he gasped. “You’re not going to tell me each of those leads to another world? That’s amazing…what are those things?” He pointed towards the hundreds of shiny, knee-high silver machines marching back and forth from the tunnels on six thin legs that bent without seeming to have joints. On their backs they wore woven-grass baskets, which were filled with fruit and a multitude of other produce when they went into the tunnels. When they came back out again they were empty.
“We call them the Caretakers,” Singh replied. They’re a sort of robot, collecting food and so forth, and then taking it down those tunnels to God knows where.”
Their driver stayed in the skimmer while Selena stood with Singh, Arthur, and Braxis, watching the caretakers trundling back and forth.
“Wonder why they even have legs,” Singh queried with a frown. “Surely they should have antigravs?”
“Think about their job,” Arthur replied, turning his brilliant eyes to him. “They’re foragers created by the ForeRunners so they’ve been around a long time. Those limbs help them climb, dig, pick fruit and so forth. Climbing trees and going along branches, in and out of holes would be difficult without them.”
“They give me the creeps,�
�� Braxis declared with a shudder. “They’re like shiny, knee-high spiders. I’m not even sure what colour they are, silver mostly I know but, is it me or do they seem to change colour somehow, depending on the light?”
They watched the Caretakers picking fruit and other edibles, tossing it all into the baskets on their backs. When these were full they turned and marched towards the rabbit holes, before disappearing within. Selena studied the larger tunnels. “Well, we’ve quite a choice so take your pick.”
Arthur remained silent for a moment, before pointing towards a tunnel a short distance away. “There.”
“Is there any specific reason for choosing that one?” Singh enquired, quizzically.
“Of course there is. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s the only one of the larger tunnels the Caretakers are going into empty handed. That makes it different, and I think we should start there. Kids notice stuff like that, makes them curious.”
To their surprise they saw Arthur was right, the caretakers were going in empty handed.
“Okay, the decision’s made. Check your weapons,” Selena ordered, her eyes and hands running over the sleek machine gun cradled in her arms. Like Singh’s it was loaded with tiny but powerful depleted uranium rounds, while underneath the barrel of the shotgun had a variety of ammo which could be selected by her thumb with the click of a switch. She loved the fact the grenades were only slightly larger than the machine gun rounds, which meant a large number of the explosives could be carried at any one time, making it an awesome weapon.
Kes still preferred his microwave laser, while Braxis lovingly stroked a slicer. The beam from that weapon spread in a V-shape, although it could be narrowed when needed. It was handy for taking out close formations of troops, although the further the wide beam spread the weaker it became. They also carried throwing grenades and twelve-inch self-sharpening knives. Of them all only Arthur remained unarmed, the admiral had told Selena that he wasn’t to be allowed a weapon until he’d proven he could be trusted.