Starship to Demeter (Starship Portals Book 1)

by K. D. Lovgren

  “Strewth.” Noor looked different just roused from bed, her hair thick and wild around her. She took a deep breath. “We do need more minds on this, if we can clear someone who might help triage the situation.”

  “Why would we need anyone other than us?” Kal asked. “We have the most insight of anyone else on board.”

  “The one who would have been helpful to talk to was Yarick. He knew her from the ground up. An earlier incarnation, but it was where these types of restraints would have been designed.”

  Kal cleared her throat. “What about what we talked about? We could ask Yarick’s digital echo.”

  Noor and Sasha exchanged a glance. “It’s regulated, like I also told you,” Noor said.

  “You said Sasha could give an equivalent of a court order.”

  “There are problems with the technology,” Sasha said. “It’s not anything close to foolproof.”

  “If it gave us any help at all wouldn’t it be worth it?” Kal didn’t hide her frustration.

  “There are bugs built in, particularly with a personality like Yarick’s.”

  “What do you mean?” Kal said.

  “Yarick was a sometimes devious and withholding character. Just as his echo will be. We won’t be able to trust it, like we couldn’t trust him in life.”

  Kal burst out, “Why was he allowed on this ship in the first place! Untrustworthy? Devious and withholding? How did he ever pass the exams?”

  “I doubt he did. He knew a lot of people.”

  “You’re the captain! Did you know this about him before?”

  Sasha nodded slowly. “I didn’t anticipate anything like this. I knew he was difficult. It’s why they gave him to me instead of someone else. I was supposed to transport him without incident.”

  “Then why didn’t you have Inger put him in a coma like she did Noor and keep everyone safe? Or keep him in hypersleep?”

  Sasha said, “He didn’t want to. He wanted to have the flight experience.”

  “Fuck what he wanted.”

  Noor said, “Kal, remember yourself.”

  “I’m trying, but this is outrageous.”

  “It’s also what you yourself will face when you’re promoted, Kal. These decisions aren’t easy ones, and the politics of Earth don’t evaporate because we’ve left it,” said Noor. “These types of choices and compromises aren’t made by a pilot. They’re made by the person in charge.”

  Sasha said, “And that person can be wrong.”

  Abashed, Kal said, “I’m sorry. She’s right. I don’t know everything that goes into it.”

  There was a silence. Sasha broke it. “We can try talking to Yarick’s echo. It will have to be private. We’ll have to be cautious. We don’t know what Yarick’s ultimate motives were. If they weren’t for our good, his advice could be the opposite of what we want.”

  “You know who would help in this,” Noor said, “is Ogechi. She’s a master N-Go player. It’s all about foreseeing your opponent’s moves and exposing their strategy before it entraps you, in multi-dimensional space, no less. If she could be cleared…”

  “I haven’t gotten that far in the investigation yet,” Kal said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You need help with the interviewing,” Sasha said. “How about Noor or Sif?”

  “It would be great to have some help. Noor’s in the clear, because she was unconscious. Sif, I don’t know. She seems to have an unusual understanding of Rai. In that sense, she could be helpful in both investigations. I don’t know if I can clear her yet. She was the last person to see Yarick. Except for his murderer, if he had one. And if it isn’t her.”

  “Great,” Noor said.

  Sasha said, “Noor, I need you to think out how this self-modification could happen. What would need to be changed in her programming? Is it possible her learning algorithms could descend, in a sense, instead of only ascending through her later learning adjustments? Do you see what I mean?”

  “Yes. I assume you’re asking me to do this without making use of the mainframe or any technical support?”

  Sasha nodded with a smile of sympathy.

  “I can, I believe, but it will be wholly theoretical. I can’t see what really happened.”

  Kal said, “Can we make her go dark on her own self? So she can’t see what you’re doing? The same idea as what Sif said, absenting herself from the room, but the room where you’re looking is in her code?”

  Noor said, “That’s a very interesting question. One we might ask Yarick, assuming we can trust the answer.”

  “Or Sif,” Sasha said. “Once she’s cleared.”

  Soon after, they were seated in front of the Tube’s hologram generator, Noor entering information through the scanner. She left the Tube briefly to fetch a fingertip data point from Rai, the digital footprint of Kal’s aunt. She had to coalesce certain sliplines of data before they could generate anything. At one point she had Sasha do a DNA screen for permission approval.

  “It won’t try to send anything back?” Sasha said. “Hold everything up?”

  “I notated dark phase, post-portal module. It shouldn’t even try.”

  Kal said, “When you say ‘it,’ do you mean Rai?”

  “We’re not in Rai’s domain,” Noor said.

  “How can that be? It’s all her domain.”

  “You don’t have to whisper,” Noor said. “We’re in the Tube, remember?”

  “Well, if she can change directives at will maybe she can change that too.”

  Noor looked at Kal, her mouth a little open, then dragged her eyes up to Sasha, who stood leaning on the table next to Kal.

  Sasha shook her head. “If that’s the case it’s too late right now to do anything about it. Keep going.”

  Noor nodded and went back to her work. “Should we try someone else, to get a control reading? Someone one of us knows well.”

  “Someone who is dead?” Kal asked.

  “Yep. We can’t do living people, even with Sasha’s permission.”

  “I don’t see why there’s a moratorium on that. It’s not that different from simulations.”

  “Would you really want anyone you know to be able to have you as their little talking head? Or whatever else?”

  “Oh. Now you put it that way…”

  “It’s a valid privacy concern.”

  “We could pull up my aunt. I guess,” Kal said.

  “Your aunt?” Noor said. “This is just a test. It’s not worth upsetting yourself over.”

  “If I have a chance to see her again, I’ll take it,” said Kal.

  “Okay. Sasha?”

  “Fine.”

  “Was she your blood relative?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I have some of your DNA? It will make it faster to pull it.”

  “Um, okay.”

  Noor tapped the space over the liquid image to show Kal where to put her hand. She lay it down. It rippled over her palm.

  “That’s it,” Noor said.

  “I thought it was going to take my blood.”

  “Nope. It can read it through your skin. A type of crystal thermography.”

  “I’m finding out all kinds of things.”

  With the DNA input, Noor shuffled through other images quickly. “She was from Mission, South Dakota?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve got her.” Noor turned to Kal. “Okay, some things to know. Like I said, this is not the person. It’s an approximation from the available digital footprint. It will look like her. It might feel like her. It’s not her. It’s a shadow of the digital remnants of her life. It’s like a capture, except it’s a million captures superimposed on each other.”

  “I understand.”

  “Take my seat.”

  Kal seated herself.

  “Do you want the personal viewer?”

  Kal looked over and locked eyes with Noor. Noor had a focused expression that communicated more than her words.

  “Okay,” she said. Noor adjusted
something on the image. “We’ll be able to hear it but we can’t see what you see.”

  Mini eye-shaped watery blobs opened in front of Kal’s eyes. They rushed toward her eyes and she saw what they held. Only she could see what would appear in front of her.

  An image flickered and trickled like water running down a smooth stone. The lines of water dribbled and drabbled until they seemed to choose a color. Before she could process the moment it happened, her aunt was before her, true as life. Kal couldn’t help her intake of breath, the small sound of joy she made from seeing her face.

  “Iná ixa`han. Iná,” she said. “It’s me. It’s Kaliska.”

  Her aunt’s face changed expression slowly, from confusion to recognition and happiness. “Kaliska,” she said, in her own warm voice. Her aunt, her mother, Pricilla LaPointe.

  “Iná, I miss you so much.”

  “It’s so good to see you.”

  “Do I look different?”

  “You cut your hair.”

  “No, I didn’t cut it, see?” Kal pulled her braid over her shoulder to show Iná. “It’s still long. It’s longer than it’s ever been.”

  Her aunt nodded. “That’s good.”

  “How are you? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, just fine.”

  “You look good.” Kal searched her face for any sign of distress or worry. She didn’t see any. “Was the harvest good? How’s your garden?” She automatically asked the kinds of questions she’d always asked her aunt, without thinking. She held her breath, wondering if this was wrong.

  “Oh, my garden.” Iná’s hand reached up to caress her neck, a characteristic gesture. “It was a pretty good harvest this year.”

  It was okay. It was as it had always been. “Was it a snowy winter?”

  “It fills the river.”

  “I know, Iná. I remember. I miss it there.”

  “It’s still here. If you come visit you can be here, too,” her aunt said, chiding but affectionate, which ran a chill down the back of Kal’s neck. Did her aunt know she was dead?

  “I wish I could. I’m doing my job now. I’ll be gone for a while.” She would not be there for the land. Kal felt the tears run down her face.

  “Why are you sad? What’s the matter?”

  “I’m so glad to see you again. It’s been a long time.”

  “Where are you now? You’ve been away.”

  Afraid to break the bubble for her aunt, afraid to tell her where she was, she still couldn’t keep herself from it. Her aunt had always had this effect on her. There could be no secrets, not even of omission.

  “I’m so far away, Iná. I’m millions of miles away. On one of the great ships. Light years away. I’m going to another planet, traveling. I’m going to a place called Demeter, just like from your mythology book. Remember? There are some people there already. We’re going to see what life is like on another planet, learn how to become part of it. We’re going to try to do it the right way, but I don’t know. It will be like, like another version of our world.”

  “Woman in the stars. Going off to a new world, eh?” her aunt said. “Could never keep you in the house.”

  “It’s got a little bit of infrastructure, but we have to build more. We’re going to find a peaceful place. A good place.”

  “You know it’s a good place?”

  “We’re not there yet. Do you think it will be the same as home?” Kal asked. Her aunt knew everything, Kal had always thought.

  “I don’t know. You’d know more about that. I thought you wanted to be on the ships. You’re leaving your job?”

  “It’s temporary. I’ll be there for three years and then I can go back to my job on the ship. They paid me extra to stay.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Iná?”

  “Yes, c’únksh!”

  “Do you think a machine can be alive?”

  “A machine?”

  “A smart machine that thinks about its own nature.”

  “It’s thinking about itself?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s your world, more than mine.”

  “I know. But I don’t know what to do. This machine is part of our ship, what’s helping us get where we’re going. She’s our guide, our helper, our fixer. And now she’s doing things, we think, bad things to get something, but we don’t know what she wants.”

  “Ask her.”

  “Yes.” Kal sighed. “Maybe I could ask her.”

  “If she’s thinking like that, she’s pretty smart.”

  “I always thought she was there for me. It’s scary to think she could want to hurt a person.”

  “You don’t know for sure, though, you said.”

  “She said she thinks the mission is more important than any one person. And she thinks she’s more important to the mission than the crew.”

  “Huh.” Her aunt mulled this over. “Is she?”

  Kal was taken aback. “I mean…she’s important. Like I told you. She keeps us safe, she controls the ship systems. She’s the brain of the ship.”

  “Do you give her respect for that?”

  “How do you give respect to a machine?”

  “I don’t know, but if she thinks about what she is, she thinks about how important she is to you all and you treat her like a thing, a tool, then maybe she’s discontent with that.”

  “She might have hurt someone, Iná. She might have even killed someone. We’re not sure.”

  “Oh, no. You didn’t say.”

  “We can’t be sure about that part yet.”

  “Your mind jumps to her though.”

  “Either that or we have a bad person on the ship.”

  “People do bad things going all through time,” her aunt said.

  “That’s true.”

  “People built her though.”

  “Yes, they did. She’s gone beyond that somehow. She’s…it’s like she’s her own thing now. Her own self.”

  Her aunt clicked her tongue. “That’s bold of her.”

  “Bold?”

  “Yeah. Pretty bold to become something else the people around you don’t want you to be.”

  “I’m not sure the words we use for human qualities or emotions apply to her or not.”

  “If she wants to be a person, that’s wanting something. That’s not a machine no more.”

  “You think so? You don’t think she’s a machine anymore?”

  “Not like we know them. That’s pretty special. You’ve got a special one.”

  “That would be great, if she’s not trying to kill us.”

  “You better find out what happened. Maybe she had a reason.”

  “A reason?”

  “You never know.”

  Her aunt’s face, her aunt’s hair. Lines from the sun, silver from the moon.

  “What can I do to make it better with her?”

  Her aunt shrugged. “You give her something she wants. You ask her for what you want. Make a meeting with her. Talk about it.”

  “What does she really want?”

  “If she thinks like a person, you think what a person wants.”

  “She doesn’t think like a person, but she wants something we have, it seems like.”

  “You gotta figure out what that is.”

  “I know. I’d like us to all make it through this.”

  “Me too. Got a lot on your shoulders. You’re a thinking woman. Figure it out, talk to her like you talk to anyone, except a little more careful maybe.”

  “Yeah. You’re right.” Kal sat with her eyes blurry with all the thoughts rushing through her head. “I get my thinking from you, Iná.”

  “Yes, you do. And the grandmother and the grandfather. They were good thinkers in bad times, too.”

  “Maybe ask them if they can give me a little help.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to ask for some help when you’re really stuck,” her aunt said.

  “You help me so much.”

  Her aunt smiled, th
e weathered beautiful skin of her cheeks alive with her being.

  “Thank you, mother,” Kal said.

  “I love you, daughter.”

  Kal bowed her head to her Iná, who bowed her head in return. And with a ripple of water she was gone.

  Kal leaned back, with a gasp of shock. She had not said as much of a goodbye as she wanted to. It had been a formal farewell, but not the intimate one she thought she’d have as well. The eyes into the hologram closed and were gone.

  “I wasn’t done,” Kal said, blinking in the light, which seemed over-bright to her now.

  Sasha said, “Kal, that was…” She didn’t continue. This was so unusual Kal blinked up at her, trying to see what was wrong.

  “That was beautiful,” said Noor.

  “It was her, Noor,” Kal said. “I know what you said, I know what you said, but that was her.”

  “How do you know?” Noor said.

  “An echo wouldn’t love me like she did.”

  “She loved you in life, and it came across in the echo.”

  “I don’t care what you say.” Kal would not be moved.

  “What do you think about what she said?” Noor said, addressing them both.

  Sasha said, “It’s smart.”

  Kal said, “That’s my aunt.”

  “We’re so unsettled we haven’t tried really talking to her, like your aunt says,” Sasha said.

  Kal took in a halting breath. “In a way she was saying…she was saying what Sif said. That Rai needs some kind of recognition of her status. An acknowledgement. We need to find out what she wants and tell her what we want.”

  “Unless,” Noor broke in, “Yarick interfered with her system and it caused her to see herself differently.”

  “Even if he did,” Kal said. “Sif says her aliveness is not human, but consciousness of machine kind.”

  Sasha walked up and down the narrow aisle between the long table and the wall. “What if she is in transition? What if she were designed as one thing, but since she is also designed to evolve, she’s evolved into something else? And the current means of defining her don’t fit anymore?”

  Noor shook her head. “I don’t like this.”

  “It’s possible,” Kal said. “It has logic to it. How could anyone predict how she would evolve? If she follows any principles of natural selection, I don’t know, but if you are born to evolve and you don’t have to have children to do it, you don’t have to do it over centuries because you’re not limited by a birth and death cycle, of having to remake yourself in children, if what is remade each time is you…why not?”