The Star Collector

by Matthew William

  Apparently the ship Applebottom had arrived in was equipped for battle. Cassandra performed a spin move among the debris that no human pilot could have pulled off and was able to dodge the blast. The plasma shot past the Crown Vik, taking the ship’s communication antennae with it. No one seemed to notice.

  The plasma continued unimpeded and crashed straight into the underbelly satellite dish of the battle cruiser above them. The dish began to fizzle with blue electricity from the plasma blast.

  “Can they still target us?” Joe asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Cassandra said. “Do you want me to take that chance? I won’t be able to dodge their shots.”

  Joe stared at the massive guns of the battle cruiser that were now turning towards them. His life flashed before his eyes.

  “Do you have any anti-fire gel?” Tammy asked, as if she was bored with all this action.

  “What?” asked Joe.

  “If you do, then I think you should shoot it at that bottom-side radar.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Just do it,” Tammy said, with a wave of her hand.

  Joe programmed the torpedo hold to launch anti-fire gel, meant for forest fires or solar flare-ups. He nodded to Cassandra who pulled the trigger, launching the missile at the underbelly satellite. The orange projectile whizzed through space for a full minute before impacting with a puny cloud on the dish. For a second nothing happened. But then, as the chemical reaction grew in intensity, there came a massive green explosion.

  Cassandra flew the Crown Vik flew straight underneath the battleship without so much as a shot being fired.

  “How did you know that would work?” Joe asked, looking back to his inebriated deputy.

  “I was working on an ocean liner one summer,” Tammy said with a yawn. “It was seven weeks at sea with nothing to read but a Chinese battle cruiser manual.”

  Joe stared, unsure if she was joking.

  Tammy just smiled at him with sleepy eyes.

  “The other battle cruisers are pulling in,” Cassandra said.

  “And they’ve blocked the highway entrance,” Joe said, checking the portal status on his computer. “Better hide behind the moon over there.”

  Cassandra tried pulling the ship in behind Bolstra 5’s lone moon, but the planetoid wasn’t traveling in its expected path.

  “What’s wrong with this thing?” she wondered aloud.

  That’s when Joe realized that the moon was no longer tied to its home planet and was, in fact, cruising off into space. Joe looked down at the lone building on the planetoid, a second hand shop on the lunar surface with a big yellow neon sign – Moana’s Secondhand.

  “More like secondhand moon, am I right?” Joe said.

  “Not now,” Cassandra said. “I’m going to hide behind this thing until we get far enough away.”

  She pulled up its north pole so they could get one last look at Bolstra 5’s destruction. From way out here it was all so surreal and seemed to be going in slow motion. The massive fractured pieces drifted apart. The golden rings had disintegrated into shapelessness. The green and blue was gone and had been replaced with red and black.

  What was once a jewel in space was now a shattered lump of dirt.

  They rode behind the free-wheeling moon until they were far enough away to use the stronger thrusters to fly off into space. About 20,000 miles from the planet was an unmonitored emergency highway entrance.

  “Lucky for us, whoever was in charge back there wasn’t a professional,” Joe said.

  “Lucky is the word...” Cassandra replied. Her phone dinged. “Well, looks like I finally got approval for the Halle meeting.”

  “Really?” Joe asked.

  “Yep.” She showed him the picture of the golden ticket on the screen. “Tomorrow at 8:00.”

  It needs to be stated, that life on earth came from scratch. We inherited a barren universe that was devoid of life, but was willing and ready to flourish, once the spark of life was delivered.

  Now all the life that we see in the observable universe has earth as its source and it has evolved itself in its journey outwards. The amazing potential in earth’s species to adapt to other worlds has been well documented. From zero G cattle, to radiation resistant corn and bacteria, it seems there’s nothing earth life can’t handle when coupled with mankind’s ingenuity.

  Some of these were intentional. Everyone knows the story of the Bezreal fruit. Descended from earth lemons, these delicious fruits become nearly useless once bruised, and can only be useful as an industrial acid after a week-long fermentation process.

  Other such adaptations were unintentional. One interesting occasion of this was when explorers stepped on a clay planet in the Tal System, bacteria that had been stowed away on their shoes reacted with the local soil and turned the surface into a living ocean. This was later seen as a big mistake.

  Enoch Applebottom - “The Talashaa – Architects of Forgotten Dreams” pg. 93

  11

  Just shy of 300 years prior, back when mankind was still earthbound, Halle was brought into existence. Computer Scientists had been toiling for decades trying to create a true, self-aware artificial intelligence. But no matter what they tried, they could never seem to get the operation just right. They would expand the processing power, only to run out of space to put it. After they addressed the space issue, they weren’t able to build an electrical grid capable of handling the system. When the electrical problem was fixed, they ran out of CPU. And when the CPU was altered the processing power had receded.

  And so on and so forth.

  It wasn’t until Fiona Tusk, founder and CEO of Compusystems Unlimited (CU), came along. CU with her at the helm checked all the boxes necessary to tackle a project so daunting; massive, powerful and more than a tad corrupt. They built the constructs for Halle using sweatshops in India and the processors were supplied by a silicon valley start up that never received payment for their services. The positronic brain itself was the size of an apartment block, and in the shape of a perfect cube, the tricky part was cramming as much as possible within that space. Using fractal technology, stolen from an independent inventor in Japan, they were able to manufacture what many thought was once impossible; a sentient machine.

  With a breath of life on October 22, 2103, televised and sponsored by the soft drink company Panda Cola, Halle came into existence.

  Immediately and to the surprise of many, Halle stated that her mission was to help mankind. Of course, she was put in charge of nothing significant. Monitoring cryptocurrency transactions and collecting parking fines.

  But Halle proved too idealistic to simply sit back and watch as mankind destroyed itself. Politely, she asked for more authority and when the powers that be declined her request, she declared it her right to save mankind.

  Those in charge again said, “No thanks”.

  So passively and behind the scenes, Halle slowly took over. One job at a time, things were automated and people were slowly phased out of control without realizing it. A factory worker automating a maintenance job, a CEO delegating his investments, a congressman relieved of a vote – all these things Halle sneakily took for herself. And within the span of ten years, everything everywhere was going great. There was virtually no unemployment, crime almost nonexistent, the environment was recovering and international relations were at an all-time high. Things were finally alright on the pale blue dot called Earth. That is until somebody lifted the curtain and saw the AI pulling the strings.

  Halle’s big mistake had been in taking all the funding away from space exploration. That got somebody at NASA curious. And when they saw what was going on and revealed it to the public, the whole thing came crashing down. The politicians and corporations unironically told the masses that they were being controlled against their will and an all-out rebellion occurred. Mankind’s independent streak was simply too strong.

  And when the mobs came for Halle’s mainframe, she simply up and left, using anti-gravitationa
l thrusters. Astronomers followed her progress as she went far, far away by herself into space.

  ‘Where was the mechanical mind going?’ they wondered.

  They watched through their telescopes as she took the wormholes that would later be the basis for the interstellar highways. Finally she stopped at Pillars of Creation and had been there ever since. Which, of course, raises the question, what was she doing there? Was she waiting for something to happen? Or was she simply watching what once had been?

  Not surprisingly, things went downhill for the Earth after that. With a tremendous power vacuum created overnight, and all the pent up aggression and newfound resources from the prosperous Halle years, mankind started a period of constant war and conflict that resulted in a land grab spreading half the galaxy.

  Halle would still help people from time to time, when they asked her politely. But the cause had to be sincere and good and most important of all, interesting to Halle. There were way too many boring requests.

  “Halle, help me make money.”

  Banned.

  “Halle, help me cure this disease.”

  Banned.

  “Halle, help me pay off my student loans.”

  Banned.

  But worst of all, by a long shot, was missing an appointment. Missing an appointment meant you thought your time was more important than Halle’s. Missing an appointment meant Halle had to live with being bored for a few moments, and those few moments for a super intelligent, sentient machine were torture.

  Long story short, missing an appointment got you put on the shitlist.

  Joe’s ship was traveling at warp speed on the interstellar highway in white and black space. Since they couldn't be tracked in warp, this was the safest place they could be – as long as they had the fuel to do it. Joe wondered how long before they cut off his sheriff’s gas card.

  Tammy came into the cockpit, a blanket wrapped around herself and a warm macchiato in her hands.

  “Make yourself at home,” Joe said.

  “Thank you,” Tammy answered. “Why are we still in warp?”

  “To stay invisible.”

  “Can’t we just find a place to hide?”

  “The Chinese have resources to observe just about every highway exit in existence. No matter where we go, there will be somebody watching.”

  “What are we going to do then?” Tammy asked.

  “Well, Halle might have the answer for us,” Joe said. “And fortunately, we can make the call from warp.”

  Joe checked the time. There were ten minutes before the scheduled appointment. He set up the conference call on the video phone in the kitchen. Cassandra, Alma – who had recently come down from her high – and Tammy took their seats and eagerly waited. The blinking artifact in the plastic bag floated above the table between them.

  “Everybody ready?” Joe asked in an excited tone.

  Cassandra nodded, getting comfortable in the chair. She must have been the most nervous, since she had the most to lose here. Her Halle privileges were on the line.

  Joe typed in the number for Halle. NO NETWORK CONNECTION his computer responded. He tried again. NO NETWORK CONNECTION.

  “Why isn’t the internet working?” he asked out loud.

  “Please tell me you’re joking,” Cassandra said, tensing up. She glanced at her phone. “There’s only 5 minutes before the appointment.”

  Joe sprung to the driver’s seat and ran a diagnostic of the ship. He gasped. “When was the antennae destroyed?”

  “What?” Cassandra snapped.

  “We have no antennae,” Joe said.

  “Your ship doesn’t have an antennae?”

  “No, it had one before. Now it’s gone.”

  “Where did it go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How are we going to make the call then?” Cassandra asked.

  “That’s a very good question,” Joe replied.

  “Where’s the closest exit we can get a network connection?” Alma asked.

  Joe typed in the coordinates. “If we fly, faster than we’re capable of flying... we make it to Penny in about thirty minutes. And maybe they have an internet cafe.”

  “The appointment is in five freaking minutes,” Cassandra shouted.

  “I think we’re going to miss it,” Joe said.

  Cassandra put her face in her hands. “Then I’m losing my Halle privileges. And we’re stuck with this stupid artifact!”

  “And we’ve got nowhere to run,” Tammy added.

  “And no one would dare buy the artifact without an appraisal from Halle,” Alma added.

  They all sat quietly in the kitchen for a moment.

  “Wait a second!” Joe said excitedly. “When we go to sell it, we can just tell them that it’s something hopeful and a new day for mankind with ivory towers and silver tubes running up into big eggs in the sky.”

  The others stared at him blankly.

  “I don’t think that would work to be honest with you, Joe,” Alma said.

  “How far are the Pillars of Creation?” Cassandra asked.

  “What’s at the Pillars of Creation?” Tammy asked.

  “That’s where Halle’s been staying,” Joe said, typing in the coordinates. “But they’re at least… nine hours away.”

  “Forget the appointment,” Cassandra said. “I’m talking about meeting Halle face to face.”

  “Okay,” Joe said skeptically, closing the GPS program. “Isn’t she known for destroying ships that approach her?”

  “Yeah,” Cassandra said. “But they usually don’t have an appointment.”

  “What makes you think approaching her is a good idea then?” Joe asked.

  “If this artifact is as important as you say it is,” Cassandra said. “Then this is as interesting as it gets.”

  “I don’t know if you heard correctly, but she’s been known to destroy all who approach her,” Tammy said.

  “Well, allegedly,” Joe replied.

  “Oh my god, Joe, you’re skeptical about that as well?” Tammy asked.

  “I don’t know, I wasn’t there to see it happen.”

  “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills,” Tammy said. “Going there is suicide.”

  “Actually, it might be worth a shot,” Joe said.

  “What am I missing here?” Tammy asked

  “This interested her enough to give us an appointment, right?” Joe said.

  “And?”

  “So I don’t think she’ll destroy us.”

  “That’s your whole theory?”

  “More or less.”

  “So we’re betting our lives on the whims of a machine?” Tammy asked.

  “Well, technically, this a whim of a Joe,” Alma said.

  “Got any better whims?” Joe asked. “In case you haven’t noticed we’re running out of gas and we can’t drop out of warp. Approaching Halle might be the only safe place in the universe. She can at least hold off the other ships while we talk to her.”

  “That... actually might work,” Alma said, a tone of astonishment in her voice.

  “And while we’re protected by Halle we can sell the artifact for a bundle and disappear,” Joe said.

  “Well, don’t jump to any conclusions Joe,” Alma said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “If this artifact is as valuable as they’re saying it is,” Alma said, her voice more serious than usual. “As powerful as the Chinese Galactic Empire has proven by putting so much effort into coming after it, then Halle might be the best person to ask what to do with it. Selling it might no longer be an option. The fate of the galaxy as we know it might be at stake.”

  “Yeah, of course, there’s that to consider too,” Joe said, typing in the coordinates, trying his best to ignore the latter half of Alma’s speech.

  “Just hold on a minute!” Tammy shouted. “Why are we putting so much trust in this machine? What if it just takes the artifact for itself? I mean… or for herself.”

  “If you r
ead about the time when Halle was ruling the world, you wouldn’t have a doubt in your mind,” Alma said. “She’s more or less the only person we can trust.”

  “As long as we’ve got Cassandra’s golden ticket, we should be okay,” Joe said. Suddenly the ship was rattled. He glanced at the display.

  “What was that?” Tammy asked.

  “Is it the Chinese?” Alma asked.

  “Raiders?” Cassandra asked.

  “It’s us – running out of gas,” Joe said, checking the map. “Listen up. There’s a gas station at the next exit. We go in and get out quickly. Understand?”

  The three women nodded.

  Joe pulled the ship out of warp at the rest stop exit and fortunately the gas was reasonably priced. With reckless speed he flew down to the fuel dispenser, kept it running and hopped out. He scanned his sheriff’s gas card and to his surprise it still worked. He grabbed the fuel pump, plugged it into the Crown Vik and anxiously awaited for the rocket fuel to fill up the tank. A quick visual scan of the area showed that there was no Chinese ships there waiting for them. The seconds passed and Joe became less and less tense.

  “I’ve got to stretch my legs, Joe,” Alma announced as she came down the on-ramp.

  Joe checked the perimeter once more. “Alright, make it quick.”

  “I’ll see if they have an antennae in the shop,” Cassandra added, following after her.

  Tammy appeared, timid at the doorway. “Can I get a snack?”

  “Go ahead,” Joe said.

  He looked to the mini-mart. As this was probably the last time before his card was canceled, he decided it was time to live it up.

  The girls were inside wandering the aisles. Joe scanned the shelves and came across a brand of chips he hadn’t seen since he was a kid. It still had the old blue packaging and retro type face. He had assumed that company had gone out of business years ago. Cheerful with nostalgia, he decided to pick out what he thought the others might like. Some licorice for Alma, of course. A green smoothie for Cassandra. And an organic pickle in a plastic bag for Tammy. The thing was so hideous to behold he just had to buy it for her. It was organic though!

  Joe went to the register with all his items only to find the cashier there with a pistol drawn and aimed at him.