“From Summers?”
“Yes. I ignore everything and just smile, but you have no idea how hard it is for me to not give him a piece of my mind.”
Terran raised his fist and cracked his knuckles. “Should I share your opinion to his face?”
“Just leave it,” Maggie chuckled. “That’ll just get you arrested. But it’s very nice of you. If it gets too much for me, I’ll just take him out of commission myself with a few special grips.”
Terran could still clearly remember their college years. They had taken a martial arts course together, and Maggie had proven quite talented at it.
“It would be best for you to maintain the status quo. We need a few reasonable people up on the bridge. When things get serious, the bridge will have the upper hand.”
“What do you mean? When should things get serious?”
“I don’t know specifically. I mean if the administrator ever oversteps anything. It seems as if he’s well on his way to doing that. Did you know that he’s forbidden people of the same gender to hug each other or walk around holding hands? He claims that this will fortify humanity’s will to survive. In special circumstances, like right now, homosexuals also need to do their part to promote the natural propagation of the human race.”
“No, I hadn’t heard about that,” Maggie admitted.
“He hasn’t shared this decree among the heterosexuals,” Terran explained, “or among those he assumes aren’t queer.”
“Divide and conquer,” Maggie said. “He’s attempting the same thing with the people down on Mars. He is goading the NASA and MfE crew members to volunteer to spy on his behalf.”
“And has it worked?”
“I think so. He recently received an encrypted message that I couldn’t decipher with any of the publicly accessible codes. It came from Gabriella Fortini, who is the MfE crew doctor according to the public records.”
“Good to know. Maybe someone should warn her friends,” Terran said.
“About a message whose contents we don’t know?”
“You’re right. That would just put us on par with Summers. Do you have any idea what the note was about?”
“Some time ago, the supply ship down on Mars reported that there’d been a burglary. Maybe it was about that,” Maggie said.
“Now that’s interesting. The administrator hasn’t made any public announcements about that, has he?”
“No, he’s afraid that it might undermine his authority.”
“That would be just like him,” Terran said.
“May I hug you one more time before I return to work?”
“Gladly, Maggie.”
She wrapped her arms around him, and he held her tightly. Terran bent his head toward her hair, which smelled like honey. He was grateful to be alive.
Sol 109, NASA base
Gabriella studied the patient’s x-ray. The MfE doctor was satisfied with it and handed the tablet off to Sarah. “I don’t see any organic damage. Everything’s fine, the results are negative,” Gabriella commented. “Can you confirm that?”
Sarah, the NASA crew doctor, thoroughly examined the images as well. She zoomed in at certain spots in the scan. When she reached the head, she noticed something. She magnified the image, but still couldn’t make out any details. She handed the tablet back to Gabriella.
“Look at this—a black dot,” Sarah said.
“That could be a digital artifact,” Gabriella replied.
“Or a foreign object.”
“You mean like a tumor? The device would have dissolved it, and it wouldn’t show up as black.”
“No, nothing organic. An inorganic foreign object,” Sarah said.
Gabriella held the tablet up close to her face. “Hmm, you might be right,” she finally said, sounding skeptical.
“Lance, could you please push the table Ewa’s lying on back through the tube? Just the head would be fine.”
“Sure, Gabriella,” Lance said.
Sarah looked over at him. He was trying to hide it, but by this point, she could always tell when he was annoyed.
Gabriella didn’t notice anything. The Italian tapped something on the tablet. “Here are the results,” she said. Then she examined the spot in question one more time. “You have good eyes, Sarah,” she finally said. “We now have a picture of the object’s structure. It definitely isn’t an artifact.”
She gave the tablet to Sarah, who also zoomed in on the spot. A button-like object was sitting in the middle of Ewa’s brain. What a pity they didn’t have better scanning equipment! They couldn’t build a 3D model of the object, nor could they tell if the object was connected to its surroundings.
“What are we going to do about this?” Sarah asked. She was actually a biologist who had additional training as a doctor. Gabriella had worked on Earth as a physician, but Sarah hadn’t, so her colleague should have the final word in discussions like this. Sarah could live with this. She knew that her partner Lance would hate being in this situation. It would drive him absolutely crazy if someone else always had the last word.
“We will inform Ewa about it when she wakes up. It has nothing to do with her current condition. And even if it did, we don’t have the equipment to carry out the precise neurosurgical procedure that would be necessary to remove it. Did you notice that the foreign object is completely surrounded by cerebral matter?”
“Yes, I did. I wonder how something like that even managed to get in there,” Sarah said.
“I suspect you’ll have to ask Ewa that. She should know if something was implanted inside of her. Do you think that had something to do with the murders?”
“We should ask Ewa. When should we wake her up?”
“Let’s give her one more day to recuperate. Otherwise those bruises on her left side will give her unnecessary pain,” Gabriella said.
“Have you ever seen muscles like that?”
“Yes, among amateur athletes who overexerted themselves. I once had an amateur runner in my office who was dead set on participating in a marathon. He didn’t listen to his body and collapsed right before reaching the finish line. His muscles were also bloated like this.”
“Ewa must’ve really outdone herself inside the object,” Sarah said.
“She definitely had something to make up for,” Gabriella said. “I was there when we caught her trying to kill Theo and Andy. This time it looks like she saved all of us.”
“It looks that way,” Sarah said. “It was unfortunate that, at the end, the drone didn’t have a clear view of what happened.”
“I’m sure that Ewa will tell us tomorrow about what all she did in there.”
Sol 110, NASA base
“Where am I?”
Ewa was confused. With Friday’s help, she had just managed to slip through the crack. She reached up to her face. No helmet! She should be suffocating.
“On the Endeavour,” replied a voice that she recognized.
“Gabriella?”
“It’s good to hear that your memory is working.”
A face was leaning over Ewa. It was the one that belonged to the MfE doctor, but something wasn’t right with this scenario. Wasn’t the Endeavour still at the MfE base, multiple days away via ground travel? “How is this possible? The ship is still thousands of kilometers away!” Ewa exclaimed.
“Mike contacted us. They didn’t have the resources to medically treat you, so we flew here with the Endeavour.”
“But... that cost a huge amount of fuel!”
“If we hadn’t, help wouldn’t have gotten to you in time, and we didn’t want that to happen. After all, you saved us, Ewa.”
“I... I didn’t want that.”
“To save us? But you did an awful lot to accomplish that.”
“No, I mean that I didn’t want you to go to so much trouble on my behalf. I was to blame for what happened with the mountain.”
“Come on now! Sooner or later, that machine would have dug up the entire Mars surface, including our base
with it. You prevented that from happening, rendering a great service to what remains of the human race.”
“If it hadn’t been for me, the NASA people wouldn’t have tried to drill down to what they thought was a layer of water.”
“That’s not true. Mike explained to us that they had a small robotic drill. It just would’ve taken them longer to reach the layer. They need a stable water source. You just unearthed the problem a little quicker, but on the other hand, you also solved it right away.”
Ewa gazed at the ceiling and its various pipes. What Gabriella said sounded logical. It was just that it didn’t sit well with her image of herself. Everything she attempted seemed to bring misfortune to the other humans, whatever the reason. The drill that was meant to grant the NASA base long-term survival was lying in a heap of twisted metal on the slope of a mountain that had emerged from underground.
Stopping the machine wasn’t any kind of achievement. And she hadn’t even been the one to do it. Without Friday, she would have failed in her efforts. “I need to tell you something,” Eva murmured.
“There’ll be time for that. First, the medical details,” Gabriella said. “We decided to put you in an artificial coma for a day to help you recuperate. Your left side was covered with bruises and abrasions, though nothing life-threatening. What worried us was the state of your muscles. I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks as if you’ve run two back-to-back marathons, using every last fiber of every ‘locomotion’ muscle in your body. This makes me think you have some undiagnosed syndrome.”
“I think I know what caused it,” Ewa said. Gabriella gazed at her doubtfully. Ewa could understand that. She would be skeptical, too, if a patient claimed to know more than her doctor.
“Regardless,” Gabriella continued. “We discovered something else strange. Sarah noticed it first. There’s a foreign object inside your brain, smaller than a coin. We can’t explain it. It might be an implant, but it would’ve required extremely advanced technology to put it in its current location. We don’t have the means to remove it.”
Gabriella’s eyes grew concerned, while Ewa, on the other hand, felt encouraged. This was the proof that she wasn’t crazy or a liar, and that what she was going to describe was actually true. Besides that, she had been worried that she might have simply imagined Friday, which would have meant that she was schizophrenic.
“That’s all right,” she said, exhaling in a gust of great relief. “I call that thing you found Friday. He’s what I wanted to explain to you.”
“Okaaaay,” Gabriella said warily. “And when was it implanted?”
“I’m not sure. Before my MfE training, I had an operation to help control my epileptic seizures, which had occurred several times before. They told me it was a minor surgery.”
“Who told you that?”
“The team of doctors from MfE’s evaluation process. They wouldn’t allow me to come if I didn’t agree to the surgery.”
“I understand,” Gabriella said. “Do you know what abilities your Friday possesses?”
“Absolutely. He can take control of my body if I permit him to, or if I’m asleep. He was responsible for the sabotage of the Dragon module and the attacks against Andy and Theo.”
Gabriella’s face no longer reflected concern, but a mixture of panic and horror. “Do you know what that means, Ewa? We are going to have to examine everyone right away to see if anyone else is carrying an implant. And we have to free you as quickly as possible from this Friday.”
“No,” Ewa said. “Friday and I have become companions at this point. Without him, I wouldn’t have gotten out of the mountain in time.”
“Are you serious?” Gabriella asked. “That object, whatever it is, is responsible for the deaths of five of our friends. If we want to be safe in the years to come, then we have to incapacitate it. It would be best if we discussed this with the others.”
Ewa nodded. “Later,” she said. “I need to close my eyes for a while.”
They had gathered on the bridge of the Endeavour, which was sitting on its standard landing pad, not far from the NASA base. Gabriella was there, as well as Theo who had flown the ship here. The four NASA astronauts, Mike, Sharon, Sarah, and Lance, were also there. They had broken off their drive to the MfE base, turned their rover around, and found Ewa next to the remains of the drill tower. The MfE base was linked in via radio.
Ewa explained how she had survived her banishment. She left out her fears, pain, and despair, limiting herself to the facts. There were occasional incredulous questions, primarily when she mentioned the thing inside her head for the first time, and later when she described how she had taken the drill and the loader off the Spaceliner supply ship.
“That was theft,” Andy said over the radio link. “I’m worried that the company will hold us liable for that. Was it your own idea?”
“Well, they have enough to share,” Theo chimed in.
“I accept full responsibility,” Ewa said. “They can’t blame you for this. You had already banished me.”
“They might not care about that,” Andy said. “You heard their administrator. He didn’t sound like someone to split hairs. For him, NASA, MfE, and MfE outcasts are all the same. They’re bringing a hundred people. Compared to them, we’re just a handful of crazies.”
“That’s just one more reason for us to cooperate more closely in the future,” Mike said.
“My thoughts exactly,” Andy said, “but we need to be prepared for the repercussions from Ewa’s actions.”
“No need to panic,” Sharon said. “I saw the drill vehicle in person. The mechanism that set up the tower is unusable and irreparable with our resources. And the cab is totally destroyed. However, the base platform is drivable, and the drill head looks repairable to me. We’ll have to take apart the tower and put it back together by hand. Here in Mars’s gravitational field, it shouldn’t be all that heavy. That’ll take us a day or two instead of half an hour, but it won’t be a major loss. The damage really isn’t extreme. The administrator will have to agree on that.”
“And how do you intend to drive the vehicle?” Andy asked from the MfE base.
“By remote control from the loader, which is completely operational,” Sharon said. “There’s no reason why we couldn’t drill for water again and then give back the machines.”
“You really want to try that again?” Mike asked in astonishment.
“Of course,” Sharon replied. “The odds are pretty slim that Mars is holding other surprises like the one we just had. And before we drill, we’ll run precise tests to make sure that we’ve really found water.”
“Okay, I guess that sounds reasonable,” Mike said. “Before then, though, we’ll need to repair our base. And listen to more of Ewa’s report.”
As the others talked, Ewa had found it increasingly difficult to concentrate, so she was glad to continue her story. During her description of the drill’s use, Ellen complained about MfE not having been informed about it, and Mike apologized for that. Then, Ewa reached the point in the story when she had let Friday take control so he could decipher the markings inside the mountain.
“That’s fascinating,” Andy remarked via the radio. “This Friday reminds me of one of the AIs I helped develop during my Ph.D. program. These are abilities that we could make good use of. The decryption probably would’ve taken me six months or more to do.
Andy’s words were important because the others listened to him, and his comments were well-grounded. Ewa was happy because they were discussing the possibility of not destroying Friday.
When nobody else spoke up, she continued. The others were shocked, almost incredulous, when she described her escape from the mountain.
“They always say that humans only utilize a small percentage of their actual potential,” Sarah said. “With an object like that in one’s head, anyone could reach one hundred percent.”
“Maybe you’re part of some secret experiment by the military,” Andy speculated. “Ther
e were rumors that they were working on something like this that would connect human and machine to create a super soldier.”
An interesting idea, but something seems... off about it, Ewa thought.
“Why would this thing attempt to kill all of us? The military wouldn’t have been interested in that,” Ellen said.
That’s the problem, Ewa realized. Why the sabotage at the beginning?
“But maybe so! That’s why soldiers exist, right?” Andy said.
“You’ve never served in the military, right?” Mike replied. “That’s nonsense. The only reason soldiers still exist is to prevent the circumvention of the UN guidelines in the interest of developing intelligent weapons systems. Nobody shoots their enemies up close anymore. The soldier just says yes or no.”
“That doesn’t mean they limit themselves to that,” Andy argued.
“Don’t argue,” Gabriella interrupted. “Ewa, are you done with your account?”
“Almost,” Ewa said. “I’d like to add something about Friday. At this point, I’m convinced that he has something like a personality. More than anything, he’s scared of dying, just like every other living creature. This is why I’ve decided that I will not let him die.” She almost added the words, regardless of your decision, but decided not to antagonize the others.
“Is there any way to delete or kill it, to use your imagery?” Sarah asked. “There’s no way we could safely remove the implant.”
“Every electronic device is susceptible to electromagnetic impulses,” Andy said. “I think we could destroy the implant’s structure without harming Ewa in the process.”
“Are you totally sure about that?” Gabriella asked.
Andy thought about this for a moment before saying, “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m in favor of it. As I already said, Friday could be very useful to us. We won’t have anything like an AI with his abilities here on Mars in the next three hundred years.”
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