Analog SFF, October 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  My idea was that in order for the data to make sense, the event couldn't be taking place on the surface of the Sun. It had to be much closer. And the closer it was, the less mass was being pushed around, the smaller the energies involved could be, the more compact and immediate the phenomenon could be.

  "It's close,” I said. “Real close."

  "I see that now,” Roger said. “Plasma gases, just like a coronal discharge. But if you correlate temperatures and velocity, it's only a matter of a few thousand kilometers."

  "Wrong,” I said with sudden satisfaction. “It's only a matter of a few kilometers. That's no coronal discharge. That's a spacecraft."

  The machines didn't skip a beat once they realized I was right. Alarms went off—right down to the old audible general quarters clangors that rattled the airless steel boxes that made up much of the L-1 station.

  "Incoming spacecraft!” Boss No. 5 flashed in all his frames up and down the network.

  "Prepare for hostile action!” Boss No. 2 commanded.

  The bosses didn't have much of a face. Out here where the tides cancel out, you didn't get many visitors. No humans to speak of. Or interface with. Most machines could muster up a halfway decent interface designed to fool you into thinking you were talking to real person for at least two or three minutes. But New Palomar was a small-cap nonprofit that relied on grants and endowments for revenue, so all it needed was a grant-writer face and a research product that met the standards.

  Ann Marie began to cry softly. Ann Marie had good days and bad days. On the good days, she could remember a lot of things—where she was, who we were, what she was doing here. This wasn't one of her good days.

  They were coming at us out of the Sun. That was a bold tactic, considering that we were a solar observatory. But they were all stealthed up, and the flood of photons, protons, and other particles and energies pouring over us from the center of the solar system kept us from spotting them until they were on top of us.

  "Arrrrrrrghh!” Roger growled as the attack craft blasted away at us with high-energy information beams. All at once the proximity radars, tracking radars, radio antennas, lasercomm transmitters, and defense systems were seized by malware and shut down.

  "Defensive perimeter breached!” flashed Boss No. 5 from behind his firewall.

  "All subsystems prepare for internal boarders!” flashed Boss No. 2, desperately warding off spybots.

  On one wall of the lab, an aluminum shield folded back to reveal a gimbaled mount half a meter in diameter with a weapons-grade laser and a magrail projectile launcher. Roger was probably at work behind the controls, ready for action, ready for danger.

  But that wasn't what I wanted Roger to do.

  Because I knew who the attackers were. And I knew why they were here. They were here because I'd invited them.

  And they were here for me.

  "Hey, Roger,” I flashed. “Look up there! It's Halley's Comet!"

  Roger was slow to integrate. He had to decode my nontech language, then he had to determine its real-time meaning, then he had to reject that meaning as nonsensical, then he had to wonder why I was making nonsense remarks in real time. And by then, I'd slipped in and taken over control of the weapons mount on the wall.

  "You son of a bitch!” he yelled. “Give that back to me."

  "Not today,” I said. “You might get carried away and hurt someone."

  I energized a local VHF transmitter outside the lab and sent out a call on the FM band. “We're in the lab,” I said, describing the location as clearly as I could.

  Ann Marie continued to cry. Torazel continued to present a flat line output, with all neuroreceptors plugged. And Roger seemed to have found access to some deep library of profanity and was directing it toward me.

  I barely had time to savor the immense relief of watching the door smash open to reveal a boarder with two arms, two legs, and a head, all encased in a suit of mirror-bright power armor, when Roger made his move.

  He tried to use brute force. He got into the environmental controls and tried to shut off my oxygen. Tried, but ultimately failed. My kit was too self-contained for that.

  Maybe his hope was to distract me long enough to regain control of the gun mount. But I never gave him the chance. I lit off a few rounds from the projectile launcher. They hit the wall beside me, so I tracked to the left. Roger never knew what hit him. Or rather, what hit the junction box where all his lines plugged into the station. I couldn't actually bring myself to kill him, but I wasn't going to let him interfere with my plans.

  "I'm sorry I had to do that,” I said to no one in particular.

  The boarder was suddenly all alert, feet fastened to one of the walls, weapon at the ready. A visor snapped up, and I got a look at a face. The boarder was a woman.

  "Jonathon Bender?” a sweet voice asked over the VHF-FM. She sounded like an angel, and I was suddenly in love. I probably would have felt the same if she were a hundred-kilo male spacetrooper.

  "Over here,” I said. “I'm over at the first work station to the south of the big window. You can't miss me."

  Through the door I could see a security bot scrambling to get its footing in the passageway. I swung the gun mount around, which seemed to upset the woman in the space armor. She made a quick bound into the compartment, spinning about as she glided through the microgravity.

  "Watch out!” I called. I let off a few rounds at the security bot and drew some satisfaction from the sight of its head shattering into a million pieces, which scattered around the lab in pure ballistic trajectories with lots of ricochets.

  Then my rescuer fired her own weapon at a second bot just coming into the doorway and fried his circuits with a laser bolt.

  "I think that one was aiming at you,” she said.

  "The machines must have realized that I'm the source of their troubles,” I said. “Look, I'm over here in the orange can. The one with the tubes and wires. Don't worry; there are no booby traps. Just uncouple the tubes and unjack the cables. I'm completely self-contained."

  She pulled herself along hesitantly toward me, then quickly broke all the connections. We flew across the compartment for the door.

  "Wait a minute,” I said as she pulled me roughly along. “What about Ann Marie? I know she's got Alzheimer's, but somewhere in there is a living human being. You can reverse the damage. The memories are still locked up in there. I know you can do it. I've seen it done. And Torazel. She can be salvaged too."

  I felt guilty about not asking for help for Roger. But it didn't matter because nothing I said seemed to affect the woman in the space armor. We didn't turn around and go back. I realized that I was probably fooling myself. Ann Marie was just as far gone as Torazel. Or Roger, for that matter. There was nothing I could do for them. I had to look out for myself now.

  A moment later, we were heading weightless down the passageway to the hole where the spacecraft had forcibly docked with the observatory. Ragged pieces of foil and the bitter ends of wires and cable had burst inward and littered the hall.

  Then we were inside the other spacecraft. Lots more boarders in space armor packed into a tiny space, removing helmets to reveal heads that seemed too small for the bulky suits. We passed them all by and entered a slightly less tiny space with no occupants but me and my rescuer, who backed up against a maintenance bay and cracked open the armor.

  What emerged was a vision from ages past, when I was young and alive and had all my hormones. Her long auburn hair flowed down over mocha-colored skin, lots of skin and nothing else. Long, long ago, in another century, in another entire form of existence, I'd been happily married for decades. But the sight of this woman made me forget all about that. The human form, the artists say, is the source of all beauty. Even without all the hormones, I was enthralled. It had been a long time since I'd been this close to that much beauty.

  She reached into a mesh sack tethered to the wall and pulled out a lime green coverall. When she was done twisting into her clothes, she t
urned her attention to me.

  "Are you still there?” she asked. Her accent was pure music—English with broad misshapen vowels.

  "I certainly am,” I answered.

  She pulled back suddenly at the sound of my voice. The fidelity was much better.

  "I am Penelope Antoinette de Sandino y Murphy,” she said. Her name only suggested the origins of her accent. More sounds were at work there than just the obvious Latin American notes.

  "And I am Jonathon Bender,” I said. “Born 1951 in New London, Connecticut, graduate of Wesleyan University, master's at the University of Arizona, doctorate at Oxford. Married once, two kids, seven dogs, lots of cats, a bird. Spent a long career staying up all night and turning beautiful visions of the heavens into boring rows of numbers. A genuine messenger from the historic past. Witness to Watergate, Vietnam, both Bushes, both Clintons, and the melting of the ice caps. At your service."

  "So you really are the Bender Relic,” she said. “Good. No mistakes. I like that."

  She smiled, then grabbed my containment by the handles. The room seemed to swivel around several axes simultaneously as she swung me up and into a recessed compartment.

  "Hey! Don't do that! Stop!"

  She didn't stop.

  "And I think you have a very nice face."

  It was the last thing I heard her say as she flipped the door closed. She left me alone in the dark with nothing but my own thoughts. A very nice face indeed. That was no interface, that was me.

  Did she really think I was just another machine?

  What an insult.

  What an outrage.

  What a disaster.

  * * * *

  To sleep. Perchance to dream. I was running through the Arizona desert with seven-league boots, zigzagging among the cactus, bounding off the hilltops in great leaps. And keeping pace at my side was Penelope Antoinette de Sandino y Murphy. She didn't say a word. She just smiled.

  We were heading up Mount Lemon when the phone rang.

  I switched on my eyes, but all I saw was the dim glow of tattletale lights on my containment, reflecting off the inside of the compartment that held me. The phone kept ringing. I answered it.

  "Yeah,” I said, still not quite awake.

  "Mr. Bender?” asked a male voice.

  "That's me."

  "I'm Jim Raffel. I'm the face of the spacecraft that's carrying you back Earthside. How are you doing this watch, partner?"

  "How do you think I am? Someone stuffed me in a storage bin and left me in the dark."

  Jim paused for a moment, then continued. “The storage bin is the safest place we could find for you in case we have to do some sharp maneuvering."

  "Thanks ... I think."

  "I've been looking over your interface. You've got a pretty odd firewall. She's impossible to penetrate, and I couldn't find any security entries."

  "That's not a firewall. That's me."

  "I'm not sure I understand you, partner."

  "And I'm not sure I want you poking around inside my kit."

  "It's just a simple safety inspection, partner. Nothing invasive. Now I wonder if you could help us out. I have a few questions I'd like to ask you."

  "Shoot."

  "What day is today?"

  "Friday."

  "What is your favorite food?"

  "Buffalo wings with blue cheese dressing."

  "Who do you prefer, Monet or Manet?"

  "All right, that's enough. I know what you're doing. This is a freaking Turing test.” I noticed the volume in my voice rising. “Well, you can tell Penelope Antoinette de Etcetera that I don't take Turing tests—I design Turing tests. End of conversation."

  Then I hung up on him.

  I was beginning to have serious doubts about my new benefactors.

  I could tell they had nerve because they charged right into the L-1 solar observatory with guns blazing. But they didn't seem to match that with brains. Maybe that was why they came for me.

  The phone rang again. I let it go for a while, then picked it up.

  "Mr. Bender, I owe you an apology."

  "You've got that much right."

  "Ms. Sandino is kind of young—compared to us anyway. Her instructions were clear, but inappropriate. Can we start over again?"

  "Is she monitoring this call?"

  "No way, partner. She's busy on the bridge."

  I wondered what there was to be busy about on the bridge during the transit to Earth. On a low-energy transfer ellipse, it's a three-day trip, with gravity doing all the work. I filed the question away for later.

  "Start over how?"

  "I'll act like you are a human being, and you can act like a human being."

  I laughed—it probably sounded like static to Jim—and he didn't. As an interface, he really didn't have a sense of humor, but he did seem to have an easy-going manner. Like Penelope had said about me, he had a nice face.

  "Let's both act like human beings, and I'll pretend not to notice that you aren't."

  "Terms accepted,” Jim said.

  "What are you, exactly?” I asked.

  "I'm an upload of James T. Raffel, born 2056, died 2117, retired as a lieutenant colonel from the New York Air Force in 2097. Interface designed by Michelle Diem."

  I figured he was an upload. While uploads aren't really people, they're usually a nice way to get to know about someone who died long ago. We talked for a few minutes about the late colonel. He must have been a nice guy. His upload knew a lot about his life, and its interface worked hard to imitate him when he talked about it. You could almost see the sunset on the Tappan Zee when he described his home in Tarrytown, with three daughters in the back yard and his wife with a tray full of cookies coming out the kitchen door. The daughters were all grown now, probably with great-grandchildren.

  Jim had joined the service to learn to fly, and they trained him well. He was rated on every plane the state had, including orbital spacecraft. In his later years, he was an instructor and a commander. My guess was that he'd kept his easygoing manner even then. It showed through in his upload.

  But in the end, he was still just a machine.

  When I abruptly changed the subject and asked him why Penelope was busy on the bridge when we should be coasting home on a long Hohmann trajectory, he didn't skip a beat.

  "So what's the problem keeping Penelope busy?” I asked. “Is there something wrong?"

  "There's nothing wrong on the bridge,” he said. “Ms. Sandino's talking to an agency at Clavius City."

  "Clavius City? Isn't that still machine country?"

  "Sure is. The agency says it represents Phobo Dynamics. They're asking about you."

  * * * *

  Amygdala. Epinephrine. Norepinephrine. The instant response of neurochemicals throughout the system. That's what sets us apart from the machines. That's what keeps us feeling alive.

  I thought I'd shaken Phobo Dynamics loose when I arranged the sale to New Palomar. But no such luck.

  "What do they want?” I asked Jim, trying to keep my voice steady.

  "They have a claim to recover stolen property,” he said.

  "Already? And why should they care what's stolen from some lab all the way out at L-1? It's not theirs."

  "They don't say it was,” Jim said. “They say you were stolen from them three years ago. They claim New Palomar lacked clear title."

  "There's nothing wrong with that title,” I said. “I wrote it up myself."

  "Do you want me to tell Ms. Sandino that?"

  "No, no. It'll only make things worse. Wait a minute. The title doesn't make any difference. Not after Penelope stole me from the observatory. What's lost is lost and what's stolen is stolen."

  "They're not arguing with you, partner,” Jim said. “But they're offering a recovery fee if we return you to them."

  The amygdala did its thing again. I felt goose flesh in places where there hadn't been flesh for nearly a century.

  "You're not going to do that, are you?” I as
ked with some trepidation.

  At that moment, I still didn't know where we were going. I had set careful parameters before putting myself up for sale on the modern incarnation of eBay. The bid only took responses from places where the local jurisdiction would treat me as a legal human being with full civil rights. But at the moment, I could do no more than hope that Penelope Sandino and her crew were from one of them. I still didn't know that for sure.

  "Don't worry, partner,” Jim said. “Not after what we went through to get you. And Ms. Sandino isn't the kind to give away what she's fought hard to get."

  "Tell her something for me, will you?"

  "Sure thing, partner."

  "Tell her I didn't realize that I came with a price on my head."

  And when Jim didn't laugh, I added: “Use those words precisely. And if she doesn't smile, you'd better give her a Turing test."

  * * * *

  They ignored me for the rest of the trip. For three days, I enjoyed what freedom I had attained and tried not to worry too much about how short lived it might be.

  Then they decelerated into Earth orbit with a great hissing of the engines and a few hours later, with another hiss and a jerk and a bump, we made our landing. Someone opened the storage bin door—not Penelope—and, before I could get a good look around, put a bag over me. I was carried away, bouncing and jouncing through the tight passageways of the ship, then swinging through long strides in more open spaces, where the echoes of footsteps were noticeably more remote.

  We spent ten minutes or so in some buzzing and clicking vehicle, followed some more carrying, then an elevator ride. Then even more portage, within earshot of birds and barking dogs and distant voices, then up a few steps, through a door, up some more steps, and then into what was, in all likelihood, a brand new storage bin.

  When someone finally opened that bin, I'd been sitting in silence for three hours. And twenty-three minutes. Time I spent wondering where I was and whether my rescuers had the slightest clue as to the nature of their loot.

  It was Penelope. She took me out and set me down somewhere about a meter off the floor, which made me feel like I was sitting in a chair or something. We were in a room about five meters square, high plaster ceiling, wide wood trim around the doorways, big sash windows, and a doorway out onto a small porch full of plants and flowers. Bright sunlight poured through the porch windows, filtered through the greenery, and spilled into the main room. Tropical bright. According to the instruments in my base kit, we were pulling exactly one G. But the deceleration from orbit hadn't involved an atmospheric descent—no aerobraking, no aerodynamic maneuvering.