by Gary Starta
It had been nearly one month since Adrian McElroy sent his message to the civilian star ship. Linda Dougherty was now poised to hold the fate of her crew and maybe all future colonization efforts in her hands depending upon what she would do with the letter’s contents. As she began to read the first few lines of the text, Linda realized her premonition may have been warranted. “This message is too important to read in my quarters. I should be on the bridge.” Linda then commanded the computer to transfer McElroy’s letter to the ship’s main console located next to the captain’s chair. Dougherty spent the next few minutes walking briskly towards the bridge. The loud thumping of her heart seemed to match each footstep she took. The acting captain felt like she was almost running in place as the corridors of the ship suddenly all seemed to look alike. When Dougherty finally reached the doorway to the bridge, she experienced a combination of nausea, dizziness and a rubbery feeling in her legs. However, Linda chose to joke with herself to alleviate her body’s complaints. “So this is what it feels like to be in command. Matt, I don’t understand why you initially took upon this responsibility; but I assure you I won’t let you down.” Linda then paused for an instant to think about her loving husband. Matt would still be confined to cryo-stasis for another month. He would not be able to comfort or advise her on this decision. So without further hesitation, Linda commanded the computer to allow her access to the vacant bridge.
Dougherty stepped inside and let her eyes quickly scan the room’s interior as if one of the creatures in Steven Carlisle’s hologram games would jump out at her. “Stop acting silly, Linda, she told herself. “Take a deep breath and sit down.”
After a long minute, Linda summoned her courage to command the computer to begin its transmission without voice narrative. Dougherty opted to scroll through the text of the message rather than have the ship’s AI read the message aloud. “I want to control the pace at which I read this message,” she thought as fright and anticipation fought for supremacy in her mind.
Twenty minutes later, Dougherty finished reading the doctor’s message. Linda’s entire universe had been altered. She now had bigger dilemmas to ponder than naming the planet’s cities or directing a stage play. Her mind then went into overdrive to analyze the best course of action.
“The doctor has confided in me to keep his work a secret. Is this morally correct? I agree that transmitting a message to the federation will probably result in a halt of the colonization effort. They are obviously not very fond of androids yet alone the idea of producing automaton hybrids. So if I were to be totally honest, I would probably dash any hope for an improved political system—be it on Earth or Ceres. I think I’ve got to stand behind my convictions on this one. Every being has a right to live in peace in the universe. And now an opportunity has been presented to put that objective to its test. I’m sorry Matt, I know you would disapprove of keeping secrets from the federation. But they are not the judge and jury of Ceres. If we are to institute an independent government on our new home, this situation could represent the first step to autonomy.”
Linda then decided it would be best if she stopped arguing with her conscious. She already knew what the best course of action would be concerning her shipmates and all future inhabitants of Ceres. She had unconsciously been preparing herself and her crewmates for this all along with the contests and the play. “I will allow our scientists—I mean robots—to prepare for colonization as planned. Eventually I will prepare my friends for the truth. They’ll probably thank me for not reporting the incident because we would all be ordered back home. I can’t imagine why they would want to spend another five years in flight traveling back to Earth. Well, there’s no turning back now. I’ll have to prepare to face the wrath of Matt as well…”
Linda yawned uncontrollably as a result of the ordeal. After a moment, she addressed the ship’s AI. “It looks like you’ll be getting a chance to meet some distant relatives. But they’ll be able to walk and talk like humans. God this sounds like science fiction.” She then ordered the AI to delete McElroy’s transmission.
Chapter 3: Drive By
The elongated shadows of CSI’s Sandra Morton and Samuel Benson danced along patches of mud and grass as the pair of forensic investigators approached Bob Schmitt’s apartment complex. Benson watched his shadow as if in a trance until Morton interrupted him.
“What’s on your mind, partner? We’ve got to be prepared to turn Schmitt’s place inside out in the next five minutes to continue our evidence trail. Don’t tell me you’re still preoccupied with that runaway dog.”
“Well, that is one kind of evidence trail,” Samuel joked in reference to their forest sojourn. “Right now, I am wondering why Volpicelli would be flying his air coach away from the people he was supposedly investigating. Why was he navigating an air coach half an hour away from Schmitt and about three times that length of time from Paterson’s residence? And Volpicelli himself didn’t live anywhere near the crash scene—he lived in Roanoke.”
“Hopefully, we will be able to answer that once all the pieces of evidence come together,” Sandra answered.
The CSI’s were just about to enter the building when Benson caught himself again looking at his shadow.
“What’s going on Sam? Are you turning into a groundhog?” Sandra teased.
“Wait just a minute, Sandra.” Benson then proceeded to follow the shape of his shadow like a trail around the corner of the building. “For a moment, I was acting on gut instinct. I thought maybe we could get a break on a lead; but I don’t see anything we can use here. I’m sorry, Sandra.”
“Don’t be sorry. Look to your left about half a meter. I’m seeing some tire tracks made by a thin wheel,” Sandra pointed out.
Benson then followed the trail around the building. “I’ve got some cigarette butts here. I’m also finding some coins and candy wrappers. Samuel then hastily retrieved the papers and money and sealed them into evidence bags.
“These might be nothing and they might be everything,” he added.
“That’s a good way to look at it. Take nothing for granted but don’t take everything to heart, Sam. This doesn’t appear to be a desirable hang out spot for anybody. Still, the litter and tire tracks could be the result of someone trespassing on the property. Maybe just a child riding a bike.”
Sandra then motioned for Benson to enter the building. In that same time span, Jeff Turner pulled his ground coach in front of the apartment building. The murderer for hire did not see the CSI’s who were hidden around the back of the building.
Turner and the CSI’s were now unwittingly in a race to retrieve evidence. Morton and Benson got a lead on Turner who stopped to search for his vehicle for cigarettes.
The investigators proceeded to enter the secure building by using a police access card which also served as an electronic warrant. They then began to climb the three stories of steps to Schmitt’s apartment at Benson’s request. Samuel strongly suggested they skip taking the elevator as he believed they could possibly find evidence in the stairway. Benson’s gut instinct paid off like a Las Vegas slot machine when he stumbled upon a data net device. The machine had been wedged between two bars of the stairway’s banister.
“You’re determined to solve this case before we even get into Schmitt’s apartment—aren’t you Benson?”
“I know you think I’m jumping the gun, Sandra. It’s just that I have a gut instinct that the evidence trail may not be confined to Schmitt’s apartment. Don’t ask me why. I just do.”
“Well seal the device into a holographic container. Be thankful our warrant allows us to seize anything on the property we deem suspect. But I want to finish processing the building by morning.”
Benson complied and followed Sandra into Schmitt’s residence before raising his courage to ask another question. “Did our good friend, Detective Valentino have anything to report on Schmitt’s neighbors?”
“He reported that an elderly tenant let a courier into the building for a pack
age delivery which never came. Unfortunately the woman was more wrapped up in the arrival of her package than to notice what the delivery person looked like.”
“Why would the courier fail to deliver the package? Unless, he or she was totally incompetent. Or was there a more sinister reason?” Samuel asked while scratching his head.
“Maybe the courier used a wheeled device to transport the delivery. That could explain why we saw tire tracks in the mud,” Sandra theorized.
“If your assumption is correct, why would the courier be wheeling something away from the entrance of the building?” Benson pondered. “Let’s get down to processing the floor, Sam. If this carpeting is self-cleaning, any fibers or body hair could possibly be destroyed by the rug’s filter within 72 hours. We must work quickly.”
Turner entered the building about 15 minutes after the CSI’s as he had to wait for access to the building. Jeff didn’t want to risk being recorded on the apartment’s security cameras so he opted to wait for a tenant to either enter or exit the complex. When a child approached the building, Turner notified the young tenant that he needed to deliver a package to a neighbor. The young child allowed the murderer to enter without questioning why Jeff was not wearing a courier’s uniform or carrying a package.
Turner raced past the child to look for his recording device he believed he left on the second floor. In thirty seconds, Jeff’s face began to lose color as he noticed the device was nowhere to be found. “Shit!’ he yelled. He then decided to take a walk by Schmitt’s apartment before leaving. When Turner cast his eyes upon Schmitt’s door, he felt his heart sink into his stomach. Yellow strips of crime scene tape were now adorning Bob’s door. Jeff quickly turned tail and ran for his vehicle.
Sandra and Samuel worked through the night to process the apartment to find the following: a radio had been left playing; Schmitt apparently at one time had a dog as a picture adorned his entertainment center; and a candy dish held the same brand of chocolate the CSI’s had discovered on the lawn. But the most compelling find was that the data net device belonged to a local courier. The CSI’s would thoroughly examine the contents of the device in the crime lab the next day.
The following morning, Jeff Turner frantically scoured the early editions of several newspapers for reports on the investigation. “I’ve got to find out if they have my data net,” Turner thought. (Actually, the data net device belonged to his former employee; however, his prints and information were all over it like ants on an ice cream cone.) All Jeff could find was background stories on Dana Jackson who had become an overnight celebrity. “These damn newspapers don’t have any news in them!” he complained to himself.
Turner’s mind then started to race. He contemplated leaving for the islands immediately without further monetary compensation from Mercer, but thought better of it. How was he supposed to support his future wife? Jeff contacted Mercer at his office to demand his payment be wired to the Bahamas. However, Mercer just laughed at his request. “Screw you, Mercer!” Jeff yelled at his view screen.
“No, turn of the screw to you, Turner,” Mercer retorted while terminating the call. “I really don’t see a big difference whether you leave the country with or without my money,” the security executive thought to himself regarding Turner’s demands. “Even if you go to the police, they have no evidence linking me with the murders…”
Turner soon realized he was in a fight or flight situation. He was supposed to meet his girlfriend for coffee in half an hour. However, Jeff suddenly felt compelled to find a nearby airport terminal instead.
Chapter 4: Transformation
It had been five months since Linda Dougherty read Adrian McElroy’s letter. In that time span, all of the Ceres scientists became seriously ill from the radiation poisoning. Fortunately for the mission, Adrian somehow managed to hold himself together to get everybody into a bio- bed before the cancer consumed their bodies. He then performed his engram procedure on everybody starting with Aaron Starkman who died first. The surgery was very comparative to plugging a digital camera into a hard drive and then waiting for the photographic images to download.
McElroy performed his unique and illegal procedure on Dr. Akira Hiroshi, Anna Ciprelli and Joyce Starkman. Next in line were Peter Ciprelli, Nadia Petrovsky and Karen Hiroshi. This left Dr. McElroy in a very morally confusing situation because his last patient was Mikola Petrovsky. Adrian could break the agreement to save the engineer’s engrams and nobody would be the wiser. However, the engineer’s skills might very well come in handy for the civilian occupation. Adrian also wanted to maintain his vow to treat everyone fairly.
Eventually, McElroy decided to transfer his antagonist’s engrams into its appropriate android body. The doctor managed to hold onto life for one more month after the procedures were completed.
The androids all awoke with their human brain matter functioning as planned. McElroy explained to each awaking android that he elected to forfeit his own life to save them all from the planet’s radiation poisoning. He pointed out that he had been the one who overlooked the lethal contaminant during his routine soil analysis and felt compelled to correct the situation. McElroy also informed his patients that they all consented to the procedure before the surgery. “As a result of my life saving technique, you all have unfortunately experienced short term memory loss,” McElroy explained in the last group meeting with his transformed colleagues.
All the automatons accepted Adrian’s implausible explanations without question. They were all convinced that they had been and were now the scientists he had constructed them to be.
However, McElroy kept a watchful eye on Mikola who remained unusually quiet during the meeting. If Adrian wasn’t so weary and sick from the radiation, he might have further investigated why Petrovsky was the only android with a strange twinkle in his eye. But there was no more time for programming modifications. Adrian had lived to see a part of his dream become reality. He had constructed a community of sentient androids. He had in effect saved the colonization effort. Two weeks after the meeting, Adrian succumbed to his illness and died in a chair in front of his console.
Only the androids remained now. The only totally organic being in their company was Ruby the bug. Each of the automatons spoke and related to each other as if nothing had ever happened. The Gallant had constructed an artificial ozone layer to protect the planet from the dark matter’s radiation stream, crops were beginning to sprout thanks to Karen’s hydroponic efforts and new buildings were being erected to house the civilians.
If the electronically-enhanced scientists could have remembered their thoughts and fears before their deaths the scene would have been ripe for the setting of a soap opera.
Peter Ciprelli and Karen Hiroshi had hoped to start a romance upon their deaths. Each of them reasoned that they had been faithful to their spouses through the course of their natural lives. The pair now planned to correct their past romantic shortcomings in their newly constructed bodies. The ironic thing was that neither could remember this pact they had made with themselves.
Joyce Starkman had tried to ease her fear of becoming an automaton with the knowledge that she could enjoy a superior mind like her son, James. However, she need not have fretted like she did as the transition process was unmemorable. One of the first experiences Joyce enjoyed as an android was to relish her magnificent beds of roses. Starkman marveled at how she was capable of creating such beautiful flowers within her holographic greenhouse. Yellow and pink roses were not the only botanical wonderments the garden accommodated. Mums, lilies and gardenias also adorned the flower beds providing a spectrum of colors ranging from fuchsia and violet to scarlet and indigo. She surmised that James—who she believed to be the only android among them—had been instrumental in constructing the holographic shelter. James informed his mother that Ruby’s discovery of a medical root was very helpful in comforting the ill scientists during their last few months of life. James was advised the scientists would be receiving a life saving treatmen
t that doctors McElroy and Hiroshi had discovered a mere few weeks before the illness would have reached its fatal stage. The android boy was still no wiser that he and his parents were all now hybrid automatons.
Eventually, the newly created androids experienced the same kind of time loss the civilians went through upon awakening from their cryo sleep. After a few weeks, they needed more answers to fill in the missing time blanks for them. However, they really had no one they could ask. Groups of the scientists gathered occasionally to discuss the radiation illness and their memory gaps. Karen Hiroshi had a hard time understanding why McElroy would have chosen to die for their benefit. “His work was so important to him,” Karen told Peter Ciprelli one summer afternoon. “I know he wanted to live to create other androids like James. But I guess that will never happen.” Karen, needless to say, was not suspicious of her transformation..