Do nation states even exist anymore? I wondered.
After deciding there was no point listening to things I didn’t understand I went searching for an English-language transmission. Nothing locked on for ten minutes, which in itself I found remarkable. The ship had traveled about ten percent of one orbit and picked up nothing. Then came something that sounded more familiar—but only slightly.
Over the hissing and crackling, I heard an elderly sounded woman say, “Esta é a base de Praia chamando delta cinco. Você pode me ouvir?”
There was a pause filled only with static, before the same voice said, “Eu tenho tentado por uma hora. Não há nenhum sinal deles.”
Another woman replied to the older lady, “Não se preocupe, Maria. Eles são pescadores experientes.”
The reception dropped out rapidly and the auto-tuner lost its lock and continued
Initially, I thought it might be Spanish and had been ready to use a few words I’d learned back in L.A—mainly from Blanco, my partner. But it wasn’t Spanish and it had come and gone so quickly.
Perhaps Portuguese? I thought.
Not English, that was for damned sure. I’d have enough to think about without a language barrier to contend with—so preferably, I’d manage to find the country formally known as America. There was always the UK, Australia, Canada and a few others. Although a big target, Canada was cold even before the ice age had set in. The UK would also probably be under thick glaciers too. Australia was a possibility, but although the country had been large, its population centers were too few and far between to make good landing zones. No, I’d need to find the US and preferably Los Angeles.
It was subtropical before—would that buy it any respite now? I wondered.
From the next doorway along—the one marked, Lifepod 6-1 Entrance B, to the lower lifepod deck—I heard a noise, the shuffling of feet.
My adrenaline rose as I reached for my piece, clicking off the safety. Still crouching I pointed the barrel at the doorway and listened.
“You can put down the gun, Mr. Luker,” said Laetitia as she emerged from the doorway, her empty hands half-raised. “I am alone.”
Exhaling with relief, I put away my gun and stood.
“What, Reichs sent you to spy on me now?”
“I can help you. In the first transmission they said Otpravit' bol'she muzhchin. Teper'! My skoro budet pobezhden, yesli vy ne delayete! Followed by, Lider ne imeyet bol'she muzhchin. My tozhe napali. My teryayem plokho. Dva plemena prisoyedinilis' protiv nas. My byli predany! Would you like a translation?”
Chuckling, I said, “Sure, why not …”
“Send more men. Now! We will soon be defeated if you do not! Followed by, The leader has no more men. We, too, are being attacked and are losing badly. The two tribes have aligned against us. We have been betrayed!”
“What language was it?”
“Russian, Mr. Luker. I am programmed to speak all fifty of the world’s most spoken languages.”
“How about the second transmission?”
“That was Portuguese. The accent was unknown—not Brazil, not Portugal. Somewhere else. They said, This is Praia Base calling Delta-Five. Can you hear me? And, I have been trying for an hour. There is no sign of them. Then finally, Don’t worry, Maria. They are experienced fishermen. I am uncertain if Praia is a place name or a beach.”
“So, no one’s talking about lattes and the latest tech trends then?”
“From the scant evidence I have heard, they are not.”
All very primitive and not very promising. Nevertheless, I was determined to go to Earth even if it was the last thing I did.
8
Hour after hour, orbit after orbit, Laetitia and I sat listening to Earth in the twenty-sixth century. Instead of a happy, healthy society and the technological wizardry built upon millennia of human civilization, we got something different, something more primitive, more brutal, about survival and subsistence. Only a few dozen signals made it to the long-range transceiver. That in itself was remarkable. But what those signals told was of a planet sent back to the dark ages. With Laetitia’s grasp of languages, she translated the non-English transmissions. We tried talking back to some of the people we heard. Nobody had heard of the Juno Ark, most thought we were just cranks clogging up the airwaves or enemies trying to trick them. It seemed like a universally low-trust place. It was also difficult to maintain a conversation between the amount of radio noise, cutouts and high-speed orbit. We asked about the cataclysm that had befallen Earth but discovered little.
Less than Reichs knows, I bet, I thought, but didn’t say to his AI emissary.
One of the few people who answered—a Swahili speaking woman that Laetitia said came from what was the Great Lakes area of East Africa—started telling us about a god of the seas being angered and rising up to wash the land clean of human damage in a series of giant tsunamis.
The patchwork of radio snippets built up a discouraging picture of human civilization.
After six hours of trying, I was still no closer to finding a landing zone. Of the English transmissions we’d heard, three were from what used to be the US. One we spoke to was a miserable guy, named Jacob who told me to clear the airwaves for more important radio traffic. He wouldn’t tell me what the important transmissions were. The second transmission didn’t speak back because it was a radio broadcast of passages from the Bible. No interpretation, no discussion, just biblical verses delivered by a man with a calm Midwestern accent. I imagined what life might be like for the people trying to scratch a living in the icy wilderness. Listening to the radio Bible was probably comforting, a source of strength to keep going in an unforgiving world. And perhaps it told of a population that had fallen so far that many could not read. I reminded myself I was just speculating with scant evidence. Nevertheless, the picture hardly seemed rosy. The third and final transmission came a few minutes after Bible radio at the same time each orbit. It was a strange mix of English and something else. I sat against the corridor wall watching the transceiver while Laetitia continued to stand opposite me where she’d remained for the last few hours. The auto-tune locked into 165 kHz once more—the third time it had done as we’d orbited Earth. Moments later the cracking gave way to a familiar male voice with a definite American accent.
“Mea atu ki te rangatira o te kōwae e rua kia kaua hoki e ia ki waho o te matenga o to tatou hoariri. Got that? You want me to repeat? I will.”
“Nah, I got it. Hey question. He aha e pā ana ki te wahine me nga tamariki?”
“Standard protocol. Kia koutou ngahau tuatahi ki te hiahia koe ki te.”
They both started roaring with laughter.
“What they saying, Laetitia?”
“I don’t know what language that is.”
“Why are these guys not just speaking in English?”
“I don’t know.”
“Whatever their reasons, it must be to keep eavesdroppers from understanding what they’re saying.”
I set the transceiver to transmit.
“Hello, this is Dan Luker on board the Juno Ark in low-Earth orbit. Do you read me?”
“This is a reserved channel. Who’d you say you were? Luker?”
“Yes, Luker on the interstellar sleeper ship the Juno Ark that left in 2070. We’re in orbit above Earth. What’s your location?”
I heard the first guy discussing something with another male voice in the background.
“He aha e kore e koutou te whakamahi i te reo?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re saying. Can we stick to English, please?”
“No, we can’t. Now if you wanna speak to us…you got something to trade then you should already know where to find us. ‘Til then get off the channel!”
“Wait, you don’t understa—”
The signal dropped out. I looked up at Laetitia, her detached expression unchanged as she looked at me.
“What was that about?”
“As I told you, I do not
understand the second language they spoke. The English parts you know. But they are the most westerly transmission from North America. I can tell you their coordinates relative to the ship at any point in its orbit.”
“Can you calculate the lifepod launch window?”
“Yes, once I examine the lifepod’s flight system.”
She strode past me and entered the lifepod, her catsuit still showing the red outline of bullet holes and the dark stains surrounding them. She was no longer bleeding, though, making me wonder how fast her living tissue healed. I got to my feet and followed her to the upper level through entrance A. Inside, I saw her trailing foot disappear up the ladder to the cockpit. There wasn’t space up there for the two of us, so I let her set up the lifepod.
“What are you doing precisely?” I called to her.
“I have calculated the launch window and tabulated it for the next twenty-four hours. There are four launch windows with more than a ninety-percent probability of success of landing within thirty miles of the target. I am now setting the autopilot to home in on the signal. The lifepod will use it as a landing beacon.”
I raised my eyebrows and exhaled at how complex it sounded. I wasn’t at all confident I could do what she was doing, which raised the question once again: why was she being so helpful? Or, at least, why had Reichs ordered her to be?
She climbed down the cockpit ladder and smiled.
“I have maximized your chances of reaching the landing zone, provided you leave on time.”
I returned her smile, “Thanks for the help, Laetitia. Say, can I ask you something?”
“Of course, Mr. Luker,” she said, her head tilted slightly in anticipation, her attractive smile still plastered on her face.
Was she programmed to flirt with people? I wondered.
I cleared my throat.
“I don’t understand why you’re being so helpful. I mean, it’s almost as if you and Reichs want me out of here.”
“Arnie told me to help you in your efforts to leave. I cannot say why.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“He gave no reason. You don’t need to worry Mr. Luker—I have no orders to neutralize you. However, I must report back to Arnie.”
“Well, that’s a relief! Do you always do what he tells you?”
“He is my owner. My learning cannot overcome hardwired protocols.”
I’d encountered AI plenty back on Earth, but it all seemed so… transactional compared to Laetitia. Advanced, lifelike AI was something only governments or the super-rich had access to. Hell, even the fact I kept thinking of Laetitia as a her said something.
“So when were you made… or came online?”
“My activation occurred in 2069 at the Thinking Kinematics Research Lab in California—one year before the Juno Ark departed.”
“And what’d you do from there?”
“A lot of training with the staff and some with Arnie, too. Much of what I know came from twenty-four-seven interrogation of the internet. Skills and abilities came from training with experts—both human and machine. I can learn much faster than humans as I have no need to sleep and eat and I do not become distracted with other thoughts. Or I did not.”
“So what exactly goes on inside your neural network… your mind? I mean, do you have internal conversations in your head? An inside life? Do you even know what I’m talking about?”
“I have processes occurring continually in my mind, but I would not characterize them as voices or a conversation. They are just logic branches forming and dissipating—it is feeling not hearing.”
“How many androids like you were made and how many made it on the ship?”
“There were three including me. One was killed during the mutiny. Another went missing after attempting to secure the bridge.”
I think I met him, I thought. And killed him.
“I am aware of others, but they remained on Earth. We were experimental and I was always Arnie’s favorite—his companion especially after what happened to his wife.”
“And what was that?”
“She went missing from their home in 2068. No one knows what happened to her. She was a very beautiful woman. Her name was Laetitia, too. Arnie made me in her image.”
“Wow… So let me get this straight. His wife goes missing, then he replaces her a year later with an android with the same name that looks just like her? And no one thinks that’s a little strange?”
“Do you think it’s strange, Mr. Luker?”
“Err, yeah I do, actually.”
“Parts of the Thinking Kinematics facility were top secret and my presence on the Juno Ark was known by very few people. Until the mutiny, anyway. So anyone that thought it strange was a trusted employee of Arnie.”
And under pain of death if they’d revealed her, I thought.
“So what do they think happened to Laetitia … the human Laetitia?”
“The police and the FBI investigated it for the two years preceding the Juno launch but found no trace of her. It was as though she simply disappeared.”
“So what’d they think the motive was? What does Reichs think happened?”
“As in most missing spouse cases, Arnie was the initial suspect. Of course, he was innocent of any wrongdoing and they ceased investigating him, choosing instead to follow other leads. The case was ongoing at the time we left Earth. Arnie does not know why his wife disappeared. He is as mystified as everyone else.”
“And where did all this happen?”
“Arnie and the human Laetitia lived in San Francisco.”
“Well, I used to be a cop and I can tell you, there’s always some angle that’ll lead to the truth—it’s just a matter of visibility.”
Before I could consider all this, I heard a familiar voice calling out.
“Oh Laetitia, my sweetheart, where are you, honey?” called Reichs from the stairwell.
The doors opened and he stood at the end, pointing and grinning insanely.
“There you are, helping Mr. Luker just like I said,” he continued, limping toward us. “You’re a good obedient wife, you know that?”
He reached us, nodding to me and taking Laetitia’s hands. The non-human Laetitia.
“Thank you, Arnie,” she said, smiling lovingly at her crusty old maker.
“Laetitia, thanks for the help—couldn’t have done it without you,” I said.
“No problem, Mr. Luker. I’m glad to be of assistance.”
“So where did you get to?” said Reichs.
“I’m all set up to go. Laetitia has calculated launch windows. I’ll take the second-to-next one in eight hours. That should give enough time to get some of the gear I’ll need.”
“Well, best you get to it, Mr. Luker. Me and Laetitia have some business to attend to. But we’ll be back for the launch and give you a good send off. Won’t we honey?”
“Yes, we will return to say goodbye.”
“Right… Let us make haste, my beautiful wife, and leave Mr. Luker to his affairs. Goodbye, cowboy.”
And with that, they left and I packed up the transceiver, placing it in the lifepod.
The next hours I spent searching the giant stores in Module 7. None of the electric warehouse vehicles worked, so I found a backpack and filled it with gear before relaying it back to the lifepod. After the capsule had landed, I’d ultimately end up on foot, limiting the amount of gear worth taking. Although the lifepods’ lower hold contained a fleet of four all-terrain vehicles—large electric quad bikes with a full roll cage and canopy—their batteries wouldn’t last forever. I somehow doubted there’d be a wireless power grid to charge them with. I thought for a minute about trying to extricate one of the ATVs from another lifepod and use it to get around the ship. But only for a minute. Access was only possible via the hatches in the lower capsule deck and the quad bike must’ve weighed half a ton. I gathered Arctic weather gear—jacket, thermal pants, gloves ski mask and goggles, as well as a bunch of spare layers. The highest calorie r
ation packs I could find went into the backpack and a limited supply of energy drinks. Water wouldn’t be a problem with all the ice around. There were the camping stove and spare gas canisters and all the accessories for warm food prep. The super-compact all-weather sleeping bag would sit as a roll on top of the pack.
And then there were weapons and body armor, of which the stores held none. The best stuff would have been in the Module 2 armory where the Marines kept their gear. But I decided I wasn’t going to risk a shootout with the rogue security droid on the top level there. And with the bottom quarter of Module 2 destroyed, the lower link tunnel there—if accessible at all—would lead straight into the void. But there were also a lot of weapons, ammo and body armor in Module 3 and 4, mostly on or beside the dead. I needed it more than them, so I made a run to Module 4, as it was closest. Ideally, I would have chanced upon a bullet-shooting, grenade-launching assault rifle, but all I found were laser rifles. So, I contented myself with some extra ammo boxes for my trusty 9mm handgun. At least I knew it worked. I found a vicious-looking survival knife with an eight-inch blade complete with sheath and strap and a small compass in the handle. I fastened it around the outside of my lower right leg, over my pants. Once I had the thermal pants on top, it’d be concealed. A dead marine supplied a lightweight military-grade ballistic vest, which I donned there and then. He also donated his hip holster for my handgun and his .45 caliber sidearm complete with five rounds and a spare thirteen-round clip as my back-up. I test-fired it into the floor, shocking myself at the loud crack contrasted in the otherwise silent module. I put on the safety and exchanged clips, keeping the old one. The .45 cal probably should’ve been the primary, but I felt more comfortable with the 9mm. Out in the open, neither would be much good against a rifle, even if I could still shoot as well as before. I just hoped the natives were friendly.
Back at the lifepod, I assembled my gear on the upper deck close to the cockpit ladder, then went down below and climbed into the storage hold using the flashlight. After locating the nearest ATV, I checked that it worked—it did. Then I checked the other three in case I needed them. All but one still had a nearly full charge. Maybe that was just because they sat in the Juno’s power grid—they might quickly drain once launched, given they were so old. It just gave me even more incentive to avoid missing the landing zone. A snowmobile would’ve been more suitable for the conditions, but it was either the ATVs or walk. While inspecting them, something glinted in the light. Focusing the flashlight back on the tires, I smiled.
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