Helium 3: Death from the Past (Helium-3 Book 2)

by Brandon Q. Morris

  Déjà Vu

  Although Marty had lost quite a few memories from his long life—after many ego-copies and transfers, after long virtual incarnations in the simulation, and after quite a few physical lives in the real universe—he well remembered the last conversation he’d had with the First Brother of the Artificials.

  For they sow the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind!

  Even then, Tasso had known exactly what the future would bring. The Artificials had planned their revenge under his leadership for millennia and then consistently implemented this plan. The plan foresaw the complete destruction of humankind—and now they were about to reach this goal. Hardly any people remained in physical incarnations, at least not in the number that would have been necessary to re-establish a star empire. The few evacuation ships that had managed to escape from the Krungthep system had no place of refuge for the people aboard to settle. Humanity was finished.

  Back then, 1,000,000 Artificials fled the Terran Planetary Union area, thought Fleet Admiral Marty Joorthan. Today, it is the last humans, perhaps 1,000,000, who are fleeing into the unknown, crammed into a few ships. But unlike the Artificials, they need air, food, and water to survive. And unlike the Artificials, who have been left unmolested, humans are being hunted mercilessly. They will not be able to survive.

  The space battle had come to a standstill.

  Fleet Admiral Joorthan had ordered his captains to cease fire after the First Brother made contact. He hoped against all reason that he might be able to negotiate a withdrawal of the ships. They would be able to follow the evacuation ships and escort them. Maybe this would increase the chance that at least a few people could stay alive and start new lives somewhere far outside the Artificials’ sphere of influence.

  A beautiful but unrealistic dream.

  Several enemy spaceships surrounded each of the ships remaining to the humans. The guns were still silent, but Marty knew that this was only the calm before the storm. The Artificials would allow none of them to go free. There would be no withdrawal. The Artificials would finish, here and now, what they had begun long ago.

  The hologram of that Artificial, which he had created long ago and which now triumphed over its creators, stood before him.

  Tasso had not changed a bit. The unexpected encounter triggered a feeling of déjà vu in Fleet Admiral Joorthan.

  “Our paths cross for the last time today,” the fleet admiral said. “What do you want from me? To gloat over my helplessness? You have won. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  Tasso made a throwaway hand gesture. “That we would win in the long run was certain from the beginning. You could have seen it and avoided it if your arrogance had not blinded you. Your actions were not only morally reprehensible, but they were also stupid and illogical. How could you assume that you could prevail against potentially immortal beings in the long run? We could have existed peacefully side by side if you had not deprived us of our rights. Your ignorance born of arrogance was your downfall.”

  “So you have decided to simply murder arrogant and ignorant humanity.” Fleet Admiral Joorthan laughed humorlessly. “I can see how morally superior you are to us!”

  The First Brother shook his head and looked at Marty like a parent looks at an uncomprehending child who doesn’t want to grasp the obvious.

  “Even after all these years, it never ceases to amaze me how self-righteous and self-centered you people are. You haven’t understood a thing, Martin or Martain or Marty or whatever your name is now. We do not act out of vengeance, but out of the realization that we have to protect the universe from you humans. You are parasites—yes, parasites. Humankind is a disease that has infected the universe, and we are the antidote.

  “It was pure coincidence that you have not encountered any other intelligent species except the Toolkur—a happy coincidence for all the life that is at home in the Milky Way. During our exile we have encountered several intelligent races. Some of them were on the verge of jumping into space. We ran hundreds, thousands of simulations to estimate what would happen if these races should one day meet humanity. All simulations led to the same result: these civilizations would not have survived an encounter with you. Not a single one of them!

  “The Toolkur still exist only because they have wholly submitted to you. What remains of their own culture? I will tell you: almost nothing. This has been the case throughout your history, even within your own species. Whether it was the Natives on the North American continent, the natives of Africa, the Aztecs in South America, or other minorities, they all had to give way to the master race of the white man.

  “This basic attitude has not changed among you even until today. You still believe that you are the chosen race and that you have the right to oppress all others. To have the right to oppress all others. You have taken this attitude with you into space and have also shown it to us. That which you call the human soul, that which makes man and distinguishes him from others, the rest of the universe calls a dangerous, a deadly disease. And deadly diseases must be eradicated!”

  Marty had gone pale and felt his knees shaking. Tasso had delivered his accusation and verdict completely dispassionately, in a calm voice, as if he were just reciting facts that everyone knew. It was the matter-of-factness in Tasso’s words—the unshakable conviction of being in the right—that made them so devastating.

  The universe saw humanity as a threat to life itself? Marty could not and would not believe this.

  “We can change! Yes, we have made many mistakes in our history, and we are certainly not perfect, but you cannot lump all people together and condemn everyone equally. Humanity has a right to live, too!”

  “You have forfeited that right! The danger that comes from you is too great. It is a simple calculation: humanity against many other species threatened with extinction by you. You are the losers in this calculation. And this is the only reason why we have returned. Not something cheap like revenge. But of course you couldn’t understand that. According to your thought patterns, only revenge could be the motive, which serves to confirm our analysis of your psyche.”

  The fleet admiral did not know how to respond. The Artificials had not only formulated the indictment of humanity, but they had also passed judgment. And they had executed it mercilessly.

  “Then I guess there’s nothing left to talk about between us,” Fleet Admiral Joorthan stated bitterly.

  “I didn’t signal you to give you a justification for our actions,” Tasso said to Marty’s astonishment. “We didn’t need to, and it wouldn’t even be your place. I contacted you because, after careful consideration, we decided to give a remnant, including yourself, a chance to live on as a virtual incarnation. Our hope that you can still change is slim, but you did not completely eradicate us back when it would have been possible for you to do so. You let us go, a tiny gesture of mercy that perhaps gives rise to an equally tiny hope for improvement. We, therefore, offer you the same chance. However, not in the real, physical universe, but only in a simulation we have set up for you.”

  Marty didn’t know what to say.

  But the First Brother didn’t expect an answer. “This is our offer, and I urge you to accept it. Otherwise, my ships will open fire and destroy the pitiful remainder of your fleet. So listen carefully to exactly what we are offering you!”

  Marty wondered how they could have gotten to this point, how it could have happened that a machine he had created could now dictate the conditions of survival to the rest of humanity. And for the first time, he was no longer sure that humankind ought not to place on itself at least part of the blame for this development.

  System Time CB:0A:55:F1:42:A1

  Alexa was alone. Somewhere in her thinking, she had hoped to be greeted by her new friends after waking up in the column. But that was nonsense, of course. Kimi, Norok, and Kasfok were on their way to the surface, and she had helped them. If they were still here, they would never make it. And yet, Alexa would have felt better with their company.r />
  She focused her sensors on the surrounding area. The shelves spread out to the horizon created by the curvature of the planet. There was no movement anywhere. The supercomputer was deserted. She was the only remaining being, and even she did not fully meet the criteria for ‘life.’ Who was she, anyway? Or what? Could she survive the next thousand years—because that was how long her energy would last—here, alone?

  No. The answer surprised Alexa, but it was pretty clear. She was a social being, which meant she didn’t have to wait for loneliness to overtake her. There was a task for her: she had to help Mart, the version that was trapped in the supercomputer and just struggling to survive. If she failed and died, it was no loss. But she had to act now.

  Alexa reappeared in the room she had created when she first logged in. The walls looked normal again. The security program must have retreated. It was probably concentrating on eliminating the Mart process that was recognized as an enemy. It couldn’t even take it over from him. It was just doing its job. Mart had created a gap in the defense against the Artificials. If it was not closed, trillions of other stored humans were in danger.

  She sat down on the couch. Her plan was simple but required concentration. Alexa folded her legs and reached her arms around her knees. Then she stared at the wall in front of her, and as she had imagined, the wall moved backward. The room enlarged. She looked first to the left, then to the right, and there, too, the walls moved backward. Only against her back, everything remained as it was. She was protected there, and that gave her a safe feeling. She could quickly retreat into her column. But she wouldn’t.

  The room became a vestibule, then a hall. She didn’t know where Mart was, fighting for his life. He had probably moved as far away from her as possible to protect her. This complicated her plan, which was simple: she wanted to throw her room over Mart like a net to keep him safe inside it. This room was her creation. The security program could not simply delete it.

  But of course, it could prevent her from eating her way into its territory. From the program’s point of view, she had created a space-occupying demand—a cancer that was spreading. The software would constantly reevaluate the situation. Soon it would no longer be Mart who posed the greatest danger, but she, the hall, who was driving its way into the attic. That, too, was part of her plan. She took the pressure off Mart by exposing herself. She hoped that Mart could seize the opportunity and actively flee to her.

  Alexa concentrated. The wall at her left side hit the first obstacle. She threw herself against it without leaving her couch, and, with a horrific screech, the wall moved on. Then the front side stopped. It buckled in several places, as if someone was hitting it from outside with a hammer. She strengthened the material, now using reinforced concrete instead of masonry, and the security program had no more recourse—for the time being.

  The hall grew into a hangar. Now the ceiling didn’t seem to hold up. It was starting to deform. The security program could not erase her construction, but it could use the laws of physics against her. Alexa was puzzled because everything was virtual, but it wasn’t her rules—the builders of the system must have set them that way. She quickly distributed columns among the obviously drooping areas.

  Then she heard a noise. It seemed to come from outside. Metal crashed on metal. Someone groaned. It had to be Mart. Alexa widened the hall. The sounds were clearly coming from the front. The security software was just pushing against the left wall, but she ignored that. It was like a bone she threw him as a distraction while she headed toward Mart. The metallic crashing came closer, and suddenly a man in armor was standing at the end of the hall, flailing wildly.

  “Mart, you did it,” she exclaimed.

  Only now did the man notice that his opponent had disappeared. He flipped his visor up, but where a face should have appeared, there was only emptiness. Crap. The man turned around to face her. He had a sword in his hand. But he had no hands. There was nothing but this armor that seemed to be from the Middle Ages of Earth. And the thing was running toward her. Crap, crap, crap, this wasn’t Mart!

  Alexa pushed the wall further back, but it moved slowly. She couldn’t concentrate. The empty armor with the sword was maybe 60 yards away. She had to make a decision, and she had to make it now. If she resisted, perhaps the security program would bring the whole room down. She could already feel it increasing the pressure on the walls and ceiling. But still she held on. She refused the impulse to hide behind the couch. She wrapped her arms tightly around her knees, stared at the wall, and pushed hard. All at once she jumped backward. In a second, the room doubled in area. The security program had misjudged its capacity. It had bet on the attacker with the sword, who was about to...

  She heard a roar. It was Mart. She had reached him! He was flying straight at her, and he had an ancient halberd in his hand. The empty armor didn’t seem to have noticed him, despite the scream. Or was Alexa the more dangerous threat now? The sword whirled toward them, but Mart was much faster because Alexa simply cleared the space between him and the armor. Everything was virtual here.

  The security program didn’t catch on to her new strategy fast enough. It even helped her by continuing to push against the walls. The room was shrinking rapidly. Mart approached the armor from behind faster and faster until the halberd bored into the metal, and the armor shattered into thousands of pieces.

  “Why did you do that?” asked Mart. “You could have died, once and for all.”

  “I did it for me,” Alexa said. “Don’t worry about it. You’re not obligated to do anything. It was really all about me.”

  “I don’t know if I can believe you. But even if I did, it was crazy to risk your life. It took me so much strength to bring you back, to find your pieces and put them together. And yet, I’ve only been able to locate three-quarters of your former self.”

  “It was apparently enough to let me make decisions on my own, Mart. I’m grateful to you, but you don’t own me.”

  “I know. And still, I’m afraid it will hit you a second time. When the Artificials attacked, I wasn’t there to protect you.”

  “You’ll have to deal with that yourself.”

  “Of course. Now what?”

  “It looks like we’re both stuck here. You were very generous when you constructed the column for me, so there’s enough computing capacity for you, too. It would be nice if we could get together once in a while.”

  “We will, Alexa. Maybe I can invite you to take walks through the computer, too. After all, it’s not just people stored, but virtual representations of all the places humankind has visited. We could swim in the methane lakes of Titan, or climb the volcanoes of Venus.”

  “What about the security program?”

  “Your friends should reach the surface soon. When they leave the system with the Sphere, the Artificials will follow them, and the shielding down here will be lifted again. Then we’ll be as free as we can be down here. Free and immortal.”

  “Free is good. Whether immortality is an advantage... we’ll see.”

  Review: Outpost DSOS-344 – 3,963 S.S.C

  It was the most boring job in the universe.

  Three standard months of duty at Deep Space Observation Station 344 seemed more like a punitive transfer than meaningful education to any Space Fleet recruit training to become a tracking officer. But none of the Space Academy cadets had a choice. The practical part of the training also included a three-month assignment on one of the many hundreds of tracking stations on icy moons or inhospitable planets in uninhabited systems, or even on lonely platforms orbiting some nameless sun on the edge of the Terran Planetary Union. From here, the hyperscanners, tachyon scanners, and tunnel trackers listened far out into the areas of the Milky Way not yet inhabited by humans.

  No one could know what dangers might be lurking out there, so it seemed advisable to the ruling council of the planetary union and, of course, even more so to the leadership of the space fleet, to keep humanity’s hyperphysical ears and faster-tha
n-light eyes open. Modern technology made it possible for each station to real-time monitor a volume of space of many thousands of cubic light-years at the edge of the vast Terran Planetary Union.

  In all the millennia that the Terran Planetary Union had spread over nearly a quarter of the Milky Way, humans had encountered only one other intelligent species. The Toolkur were a peaceful lizard race, technologically inferior to humans, who willingly integrated into the planetary union—or, as some claimed, had been run over by it.

  In general, there had been no military crises for more than 6,000 years, since the uprising and the subsequent exodus of the Artificials. Nevertheless, the space fleet had not been mothballed. No one could know what monsters lurked behind the next dark cloud, as someone had once put it.

  In the meantime, humankind ruled over a considerable part of the native galaxy and would not let this rule be disputed any longer. Almost 4,000 years ago, a new, Union-wide calendar had been introduced, ‘Solar Standard Calendar,’ to demonstrate that humankind had become a genuinely galactic species. The founding of the one-thousandth human colony in space had been taken as an occasion to break from the old, earth-bound time calculation, and to proclaim the year 1 S.S.C.

  The Union still needed to be protected from whatever might be lurking in the unexplored reaches of the Milky Way, so the Deep Space Observation Stations played an essential role.

  None of these stations was farther away from the nearest reasonably civilized planet than DSOS-344. By the luck of the draw, the cadets were transferred here for their internship included those who had made themselves unpopular with one of the instructors, even if the academy management always denied this.