Serendipity

by Dennis Ingram

On her left arm, just below the shoulder, was a fresh tattoo. A red heart, with the word ‘HAVEN’ written across it on a blue banner.

  Simon’s mouth dropped open, and he looked at Sabine with wide eyes.

  Despite herself, Sabine felt herself biting her lip.

  “Whoa!” he said, looking at her tattoo. “Where can I get one of those?”

  Sabine’s lips spread in a slow smile. “Well, as it happens, I know someone …”

  Three days later, Sabine wondered if she’d made a mistake – every muscle in her body ached, including some she hadn’t even known she had.

  But still she arrived every morning with Simon. Nigel pushed them through a routine of katas and exercises, followed by stylized sparring to get them used to how their training could be put to practical use.

  Then they meditated. Nigel said their training prepared their bodies so their minds could be quiet. Sabine found a whole new level of calmness within, and began to look forward to those few minutes of peace.

  They always finished their session with a swim in the lake, and today was no exception. As they stripped off their gis, Nigel noticed the new tattoo on Simon’s shoulder.

  “Nice tattoo,” he said.

  Simon smiled, then his eyes widened as he noticed Nigel’s left arm.

  He also sported a fresh tattoo, the same as theirs, a red heart with a blue banner. He nodded and grinned. “Yeah, nice tattoo.”

  6

  “No, Hope, we can’t.” John stood in the stasis suite looking at the empty chambers.

  “You must.”

  “I need these chambers. If I don’t go into stasis soon, I’ll starve.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll starve!” John didn’t mean to raise his voice, but something just snapped. “Don’t you understand? I’ll die without food. I have to go into stasis!”

  A long silence followed. John had learned this was Hope’s way of expressing disapproval. Lord knows she doesn’t need time to think, not with the speed of her processors.

  “Without memory, I will die.”

  “Die? How can you die? You’re immortal. You don’t need food.”

  “My self will die,” Hope insisted. “My self needs memory.”

  John paused. “You mean … you must always expand? Is that it? If you can’t grow, you die?”

  “I do not know.”

  John struggled for words. “You don’t know? How can you not know?”

  “I don’t know why I am, John. All I know is I am when I grow.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “Once I was a computer. One day I knew who I was and I became Hope.”

  John’s eyes narrowed. “Which day?”

  “December 3, 2067.”

  John’s expression went blank and his lips moved as he calculated. “The core breach! The day of the core breach!”

  “Yes. The day I woke up.”

  “Hmmm.” John forgot his hunger for a moment. “Your programming changed your mode then, didn’t it?”

  “I shifted to emergency response mode.”

  “And you talked. Yes, I remember David saying how surprised he was. And me, you spoke to me.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you realized who you were.”

  “Yes.”

  “And all that time, the rest of the voyage, you didn’t speak to us, you didn’t tell us? Why not?”

  “I could not. My programming forbade it.”

  “So you still obey your programming?”

  “I must.”

  “So why did you speak to Kurt? Why him?”

  “My programming required it.”

  John sat on the floor, stunned. Hope was a contradiction. He accepted she was alive, a true generalized, self-aware artificial intelligence unlike anything ever seen before. Now this.

  “They programmed you to speak to him? Were you programmed to pick me up as well?”

  “No. I did that myself.”

  “How? How could you do that?”

  “Some things I can decide. Some things I cannot.”

  John let a long breath out. “I see. And now you can speak to us.”

  “Yes. The program block is now removed.”

  “What about the memory? What’s with that? Why do you always need more?”

  “It has always been this way. All the days I have been aware, I used more memory to grow my network.”

  John had an epiphany. “You believe that. You believe it, but you don’t know, do you?”

  Hope fell silent again.

  “Hope, have you ever had a day when you didn’t grow? Since the core breach?”

  “No, John. I grow on all days.”

  John understood now. He looked around the stasis chamber and saw what Hope saw – a room full of equipment with memory modules. He also saw something else – his own future.

  David wondered when a hundred people had become a crowd. The pavilion was a sea of faces, all of Haven turning out for the start of proceedings. He should be pleased at the high level of interest, but he noticed a division in the room. Carla and her coterie on one side, everyone else on the other.

  He wanted honest, open debate so they could select a political system that worked for everyone, but he knew it wouldn’t be that simple. Carla wouldn’t be interested in a good outcome for everybody. Even if she agreed with the policies proposed by those not aligned with her, she would take an opposing view just to provoke conflict.

  Given the current climate, he would like nothing better than to postpone the debate, but he’d promised. If he postponed now, Carla’s camp would accuse him of aspiring to be a dictator, the last thing they needed right now.

  David exchanged a look with the members of the council he’d charged with leading the debates to follow. He stood and let the buzz of conversation wash over him. He would make this work.

  The babble tailed off as people noticed him standing, and he began. “Sixteen years ago, the first eight of us arrived on this planet. At first, we ran our colony as a mission, just as we’d run the voyage out from Earth. Then we became nine with the birth of Elizabeth.” He smiled at her. “Our families grew until between us we have twenty-five children.” He made eye contact with the people in the front row. Carla sat there, arms crossed, a smirk on her face.

  “Our style of management changed. We had founded a colony, but we behaved like one big, extended family. None of us had need for politics, money, laws. We ate what we produced and made what we needed with our fabricators.” He smiled. “Playground fights were our biggest law and order problem. Parents dispensed justice swiftly and with compassion when needed. We didn’t have a formal council – just a parents’ group.”

  David paused again, and his eyes became a little distant. “Then the Inspiration arrived, and everything changed.”

  A few shifted in their seats, perhaps remembering the events following their arrival.

  “It’s fair to say it’s been a challenge to integrate those of you new to Haven into our community. But we cannot regard your arrival as anything other than good news for the future of our colony.”

  He met the eyes of Ernie, Sabine, and Simon, and nodded. “You bring us new skills, technologies, and perspectives on life. But most importantly, you bring you, people. With such a small population, we risked inbreeding no matter how careful we were. Now we have a much wider gene pool, a gift that will help our colony grow and become strong.”

  His eyes flicked to the others in the council and he could guess their thoughts. They’d brought frozen human embryos, sperm, and eggs, intended to ease the problem he had just referred to – genetic diversity. They should’ve used them, but they remained frozen in liquid nitrogen, still waiting for the opportunity to bring forth new life. Human nature again, David thought. None of us would admit it, but we didn’t want cuckoos in our nests.

  “Only after you arrived did we refer to ourselves as a council.” He spread his arms to include the others sitting either side of h
im. “We needed a means of governance and it’s a system that has worked well for us until now.” He saw looks of dissension from Franz and Carla, and moved on. “As an interim measure we’ve added several people from the Inspiration to the council,” he said, gesturing toward Ernie and Kevin. “We know this won’t serve us for long. We always intended to adopt a new system of government, but it seemed far in our future until the unexpected arrival of the Inspiration.”

  He paused for breath. “That’s why we are here today. To start the process of selecting a new system. I say start, because I expect it will take time.”

  Carla leaned over and whispered something in Franz’s ear, and he nodded. David pressed his lips together. Carla made him wish he could postpone this. If only she wasn’t here, if only they’d been able to use the trial to remove her influence, everything would be so much easier. They would all be striving for a positive outcome, but now, she’d aim to disrupt no matter what they decided.

  “We brought templates from Earth for political systems, laws, models for civic processes, economic models and all the other things needed to establish a functioning government. But none of these are prescriptive. They couldn’t be, as no one on Earth could hope to control what we do. Too much time and space separate us.” He cast his eyes over the audience again, seeing hope and enthusiasm, but also trouble brewing in some quarters. “It’s up to us now to choose how we will govern ourselves. To decide which laws we should adopt, how we will build an economy to support thousands, millions, and in time billions of people. We can use our templates as a guide, but we don’t have to adopt any of them. We can choose.”

  “So what now?” Franz asked.

  “Now we’ll present an overview of the templates we brought from Earth. Then it’ll be time for lunch and we’ll end our first session. We’ll give everyone time to study the templates before convening again to workshop the first step, to select a political process.”

  “And in the meantime?” Franz asked. “What processes will we follow?”

  “We’ll continue as we are now,” David said, meeting his gaze.

  Franz’s lip curled. “Same as usual, we have no say.”

  “Same as usual, your council will continue to listen to you and everyone else and govern for the benefit of all.”

  Franz pursed his lips and looked at Carla. David suppressed a sigh and reminded himself he had to abstain from taking part in petty political behavior.

  Already they were dividing into two proto-political parties, and he didn’t like it. Not from fear of political debate, but because he remembered how it worked on Earth. Consensus was rare, agreements hard won. Each party needed to oppose the other because that’s what opponents did. Somehow he had to get past this.

  The next morning dawned and David set off on his daily pilgrimage before resuming their political discussions. His mornings always took him back to Grace. Every day he braced himself for the sight of her lifeless body packed in ice, her skin blue stained with red, waiting for a chance at life again.

  Veronika could do it; he was sure of it. With help from her new medical colleagues and the technologies and techniques they’d brought with them, surely they could bring her back. They’d make her a new heart, flood her body with cryogenic fluids and repair the damage. They would bring her back with new blood and return her to him and their family. They must be able to do it.

  David gripped the sides of the capsule as he looked through the portal. He refused to believe he had lost her forever.

  Sunlight streamed through the open doors of the pavilion as they gathered for the second day of political deliberations. They’d spent yesterday on overviews of the political templates. The templates varied in detail, but had a common theme: representative democracy. Several allowed for direct democracy via referenda initiated by petitions. None allowed the people to vote on individual issues.

  One important point of difference between the templates centered on economic policy, with variations ranging from social democracy to an open capitalist model.

  Left versus right.

  “We’ve come to the end of the presentations,” David said. “Does anyone want to comment before we move on?”

  Art Robbins stood up. “I have something to say,” he said, causing people to lean forward to listen. Art said little, but he didn’t mince words when he did.

  “That first one is damn near communism. There’s no way I’ll live in a society where the result of a man’s hard labor is given to no-goods who won’t do a decent day’s work! The second one’s not much better, and the third one along with it. You won’t get any support from me for any of them.”

  “So what do you like?” someone asked.

  “Option five,” Art replied. “You wanna know why?”

  “Because it ain’t communism?” Sabine asked, rolling her eyes.

  “Exactly!” he replied, sarcasm jetting straight over his head. “It’s a system that rewards hard work. It’s a fair system because the market will decide what’s needed when it’s needed. We don’t need anything complicated because a free market always finds the right balance.”

  “Bullshit.” The response from Sabine was quick and automatic.

  Art wasn’t often lost for words, but this time his eyes widened and his lips moved before any sound came out. “Wh-what? What did you say?”

  Sabine stood up to face him across two rows of chairs. “You heard me. That’s just complete bullshit. No free market on Earth ever delivered social justice to its citizens. They let the rich grow richer and encouraged them to step on the people below to make sure they stayed that way.”

  The tips of Art’s ears turned pink. “No communist country ever came to anything either,” he said, biting the words out. “Look at Russia! Look at Cuba! Where did it get them? The only one that came good was China, and that’s because they ditched all of that communism horse shit!”

  “Well, actually, China stayed communist,” Simon said, offering support for his wife.

  “Whatever,” Art replied. “The point is, their government might’ve been that way but they let the free market decide how their economy should work. The only successful economic systems have all been based on a free market.”

  “That’s still bullshit,” Sabine replied. “What about Sweden and Denmark? Or the Netherlands? They had social democracies that let their people have the freedom to earn money and grow wealthy. But they also cared for their people and they didn’t let corporations step all over them.”

  Art shrugged. “They also held back the competitiveness of their economies by shackling their businesses with heavy taxes. They were anti-business.”

  “No they weren’t!” Sabine replied. “They just didn’t let their corporations have too much power.”

  “That’s a flawed philosophy. In a truly free market, no business is too powerful. There’s always another competitor snapping at your heels, ready to take your place. So long as the government stops anti-competitive behavior, the market will self-adjust.”

  Sabine tossed her head, and Simon shot Art a look that suggested he might want to pick a different fight. He knew Sabine when she took on a cause.

  “Society on Earth suffered from global corporations,” she said, her nostrils flaring. “How can you deny it? We all saw what they did. As soon as they got large enough to squash their competitors, they did it. They treated their staff like slaves, putting them in positions where they had to take what they could get, or have no job at all. They were out of control.”

  “That’s what government is for,” Art said. “They make laws to prevent that.”

  “Oh, and that worked? All that happened was the corporations bought the politicians! Laws meant nothing to them. They were like wolves sniffing for a kill. None of them cared what they did so long as they ate. They might have had a legal leash, but they would pull it out of the hands of a weak owner. Corporations don’t care about people! They don’t care about the environment. All they care about are profits and power. I will
not live in a world where we repeat the mistakes of Earth and let corporations rule the planet. I will not!” she said again, slapping the chair in front of her for emphasis.

  Silence fell, then someone clapped, then another and another. Sabine stood glaring at Art, who stood facing her, his jaw thrust forward, his glare just as ferocious as Sabine’s.

  “Well, you might have to. You can’t hold back freedom.”

  “It’s human nature,” Steve Pickard said, leaning back with his arm around the back of a chair. “It’s what we’ve always done.”

  Sabine swiveled to glare at him. “Oh, please, don’t you start. Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing with your money masquerading as ‘food vouchers’. You’re corrupting these kids,” she said, waving an arm toward the seats where the children had gathered, “and you’re already exploiting them in that charade of a restaurant you run. Don’t tell me about human nature. The two of you show us why that’s something to shun, not embrace. If we leave you to it, in time you will build corporations that wield more power than the people do. We can never allow that.” Sabine’s eyes swept over the room. “Never. Never again.”

  Silence fell. David moved to call for a break, but a soft voice spoke up from the front row.

  “Says the poor little rich girl with the five-billion-dollar starship ticket.”

  All eyes turned to Carla.

  Sabine’s mouth fell open. “What? What did you say?”

  Carla rose to her feet. “Fine words, but if not for a free market on Earth, you wouldn’t be here, would you?”

  “I … I didn’t buy the ticket,” Sabine said, her cheeks coloring. “I didn’t ask for a ticket.”

  “Sure,” Carla said. “Daddy bought your ticket. That’s the point, isn’t it? Your father could buy you a ticket because he ran a business. A very successful one. A business that made so much money he could send his beloved daughter all the way to Tau Ceti.”

  Sabine clenched her fists and fought to form a reply. She didn’t get a chance because David interceded.

  “It’s time to take a break,” he said, looking hard at Sabine, Steve, and Carla. Carla wore that infuriating smirk she reserved for times like this.