They were acting like we were going to be away indefinitely. I had to remind them, “Who'll keep you guys and our harvesting pingers in tip top shape if I don't come back before we have to re-plant after the Perihelion Pass is over?”
I knew they were going to miss me, and I was going to miss them too. I got a sly smile on my face as I asked innocently, “Unless of course, you want to visit New Terra with us?”
All of the irises in their optical ports widened, and Glitch squealed in alarm, remembering his last visit there. They were all shaking their heads almost violently. I grinned, “I thought not.” I won't share what they said to me using their new binary language when they realized I was teasing them. Suffice it to say that Vash is wearing off on them.
We reached the modules just as the huge transport and the Sky Guard tumbril touched down. The sky guard were out first, five armed men and women jogged our way. They straightened when they saw Vashon and saluted. She pointed. “The Betweener bodies are in unit A, a prisoner in unit B in need of medical assistance.”
They saluted and took off at a jog again. When they started entering the storage units, that's when the transport's huge bay door finally lowered to become a ramp. Men and women dressed in riot gear like the Sky Guard but armed with more advanced looking weaponry and gear flowed out, followed by a concerned looking Anna Germaine and three techs.
She didn't even bother with niceties. Her scanner was already moving down Vashon's body as she reached us. She glanced at me and hissed out, “What have you done to her systems? You've butchered up almost everything...”
Vashon pushed her scanner away. “Yes, it is good to see you too Doc. What's that? How am I? Well, I'd be dead right now if Vega hadn't hacked your systems and kept my implants operational. Thank you for asking.”
The Director of Sciences looked at her a moment, the inclined her head. “Of course. Systems diagnostics?” Now I finally understood the way Doctor Germaine had treated her on New Terra when I was there last. She had started with scanning her then too when she met up with us. As much as I wanted to like the woman, she didn't see Vashon as human. She was an experiment to her. She worried about her research done with her more than the person it was keeping alive.
I tried to keep the sour look off my face as the woman raised her paddle again and scanned my girl. She was muttering, “How is this even functional? This wouldn't... she hacked the core processor? Impossible... and this harness...”
She looked up and smiled at Vash. “It is a miracle you kept your core operational. Don't worry. We'll have you fixed up and ready to present to Lady Peregrine in record time. There have been some advancements since your retrofit.”
Vash held up the memory crystal and said like she wasn't being treated like a favorite toy, “Fixit thinks it's possible to rejoin the emotional engrams with my... prior... memory engrams. We just need the original brain scans you took from me, not just from my memory regions.”
Anna blinked at her and stared at the crystal, then at me. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Whether it was because she had tried and failed in the past, or that she still suspected I was the one giving my pingers sentience.
She plugged the crystal into her isopad and flipped through my notes, her eyes widening. “So by creating a distributed learning node system instead of a central cluster... this is beyond the AI we're currently implementing in...”
She pulled the crystal and pocketed it almost greedily as she licked her lips in anticipation. Then she said, “Come along Vashon. We need to get you to New Terra before this bastardized kludge of a power harness fails.”
We started to follow her until the armed guards moved between Vashon and me, blocking my way to the transport. Their weapons pointing at me all powered up with a whine.
With roaring squees of challenge, all my pingers were in their faces, electric welders sparking in their grapplers or plasma cutting torches. A deafening horn blast sounded from Turk who started rolling over, calling the other harvesters out of the repair bay.
Glitch was actually growling, and the guards looked stunned and afraid that pingers were threatening them. I thought o myself, “That's right you crystal licking bootwaffles, my family doesn't have Asimov inhibitor chips. They can hurt you or worse.”
Vashon was there sliding between them and me, yelling, “Stand down!” They moved their guns from her and toward my family. Anna called out, “Go ahead, stand down.”
One woman said as she aimed at Flower while squinting her eyes at the plasma torch that was close enough to her face that beads of sweat were rolling down her face, “But ma'am... the pingers... they're attacking. That's not possible.”
Anna Germaine looked past them to me, then she smiled. She looked entertained as she made a lowering motion with her hand, “It's ok. Stand down. Fixit's pingers and me are old friends.”
Glitch shuddered at that.
After they lowered their weapons, Flower pivoted her orb toward me and squeed out a two-tone inquiry that sounded sort of like, “Fixit?” I nodded, and she lowered her torch, the other pingers following her lead.
The Director of Sciences said, “Sorry about that, but we knew you'd insist on coming, thus the armed escort. But we can't let you see our work up there. You shouldn't even know about Vashon. But I guess there's no getting around that now. Lady Peregrine seems to feel she is in your debt.”
I blinked at that and Vashon prompted, “And you never thought to just ask?” Then her eye widened. “No. You just wanted to see how Vega's pingers would react.” She raised her voice, letting her anger show. “How the fuck do you think they'd react to a family member having guns shoved in her face?”
Germaine just shrugged and smiled. “Can't blame a girl for curiosity.” Then she got serious. “But she can't go to the bio lab with you.”
I was frustrated, but I understood. These were the black labs they hid from the Galactic Federation, the labs where they had saved Vash the first time. I'm sure I'd become a liability if I were to know the location, and I'd have some sort of unfortunate accident.
Vash looked at me, and I exhaled loudly, “It's ok love. I have work to do down here in preparation for the Pass to be over. Call me when you're ok?”
She nodded and then gave me a heated kiss that had Anna looking a little confused like maybe Vash was more human than she believed. Just wait until she tried powering her down like she had before, I left a little gift in the code for her. Then they headed into the transport. At the last second I yelled out, “And I want my original multi-tool back. Your stupid lockouts almost cost Vashon her life!”
Anna stared at me as the ramp raised, and gave me a single nod just before it shut. Good. I may be a hack that could cobble junk together to make some amazing things, but that didn't mean she could steal from me.
Now she was stealing my girl. At least I would be seeing her soon. After the End of Pass, worst case scenario.
I moved back as the Sky Guards returned with the bodies and the prisoner and I pulled back even farther with my pingers as they prepped for launch.
The engines kicked up a spray of muddy water, and I could see Vash in one of the transport windows watching me and pressing her hand against it, fingers splayed. My heart melted, and I held a hand up to her, fingers splayed. Then with a thrum, the two vehicles skimmed the ground until they were clear of the Agri-Grid and the photon shield.
Then in a flash of lightning that illuminated their hulls before they kicked in their main plasma drives to break atmosphere, they were gone.
I sighed and exhaled, whispering, “See you soon love.” Then I turned back to my pingers who were looking skyward, making sad sounds. I held my hands out, and Flower took one, Glitch the other.
I looked at my family, my protectors and asked, “Shall we go home?” With squees of agreement we walked back to the repair bay, hand in hand.
I couldn't wait until my girl called, I missed her already.
The End
Descent
A Fi
xit Adventure
By Erik Schubach
Copyright © 2018 by Erik Schubach
Published by Erik Schubach
P.O. Box 523
Nine Mile Falls, WA 99026
Cover Photo © 2018 Ravven / Depositphotos.com license
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, blog, or broadcast.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Manufactured in the United States of America
FIRST EDITION
Chapter 1 – Cheater
“Hey!” I blurted when I noticed Flower sneaking another card as I stared idly out the windows of the huge Quonset hut repair bay of pinger maintenance in Agri-Grid A1 here on Tau Ceti Prime. I had been watching the dim auroras play across the green and blue sky, the last remnants of ionization in the atmosphere from the superstorms of the Perihelion Pass. And we hadn't felt an earth tremor in days.
I pointed an accusing finger at the innocent looking pinger, her orb-shaped body tilted to the side as her ocular port iris widened to accentuate that faux innocence. “You little cheater!” So that's how she always seemed to get a disproportionate number of full moons in the game!
She squeed out a two-toned response which sounded suspiciously like, “Full moon,” as she ignored my accusation and laid down her eight cards in front of me.
I sputtered out, “I saw you stealing a card this time, stinker!”
She rolled her orb to mime shrugging her shoulder while my other pingers who were already eliminated from the game all warbled in what I knew to be laughter at my expense. Well, of course, they took her side, all the silly boys had crushes on her. I poked her right below her ocular port and said, “You, Flower, are no lady. Now I know why you are undefeated in Eights.”
She squeed in an oscillating high, and low pitch, the audible binary language my pingers have developed to communicate with me audibly. Over the months since they started using it, I've found I don't need to count the highs and lows much anymore to understand what they are saying. It's just like learning any other new language.
I sighed at the cheat-bot and replied as she turned her orb down bashfully. Yeah, I know, she was playing me, but she's just so flanterskelling cute. I droned out, “Love you too, Flower.” Then I leaned forward and kissed her right on the ocular port and confiscated her cards. “No more Eights for you.”
She squeed out a disappointed but somehow smug, “Aaaawww.”
Then I looked around at the boys with an accusing smirk. “Don't look so innocent guys. You could have warned me.”
Glitch was warbling in what sounded like a giggle. The little bootwaffle. I smiled at him as I put the cards back in their box. It was an actual pressed paper box, like the cards, which were of thick pressed paper too. They were positively antique. Any bio-matter on Prime was used to mix into the soil here dirtside to enrich the carbon content of it in the farms and to fertilize the crops.
These weren't made of the silicate-based cerama-plastics that have been required to be used in place of bio-products the past few hundred years here on Prime. They were my mom's cards, contraband, and I never did learn where she got them before she passed.
I eyed Flower's makeshift memory matrix assembly I had cobbled together from matrix crystals from a couple of the broken maintenance isopads from around the repair bay. It wasn't pretty, but it allowed her to use her grappler... to cheat at cards among other things after she sacrificed her own grappler memory matrix control crystal to help save my girlfriend's life.
I absently looked up at the ceiling imagining the cities that were in high orbit of Prime at the moment. I still didn't know how my sexy Sky Guard ranger was doing. In the past two weeks, I was only able to contact New Terra once between breaks in the monster storms of the perihelion, and it was spotty communications with the high amount of ionization in the atmosphere.
It was Lady Peregrine herself who responded when I used the old hand-cranked communication station that was hooked into the huge satellite transceiver arrays at the terraforming station. From what I could piece together from the fragments of the transmission that got through, was that Vashon was stabilized and the 'doctors' were working on 'healing' her injuries.
I understood the need for her basically speaking in code like that, stressing those words. It was after my girl had saved Glitch and me in one of the monster storms and she was seriously injured, that I learned of all the secrets she has kept from me, even though I had pretty much sussed it all out on my own by then.
She had been the ranger who had stopped the Gamadine raid but had suffered so many injuries in her sacrifice, from calling her tumbril down onto her and a renegade Betweener captain, Horatio Tanner.
She should have died from her wounds, but one secret that Captain Vashon Peregradopolis of the Sky Guard had, was that Lady Peregrine, ruler of Prime, was her mother. And the woman told the doctors to save her daughter no matter the cost.
She was told that with implants, they could save her body, and it would even be technically legal with thirty-three percent organic replacement, just below the hard limit of thirty-five percent for high hazard, non-military individuals. As the Sky Guard is a civilian peacekeeping force and not military, they could justify it under the 4078 Humanities Act.
The problem was the catastrophic brain damage Vash had suffered.
There was a hard limit the Galactic Office of Ethical Standards had as to what made someone human or simply property that needed to be recycled when it came to brain tissue replacement with cybernetic implants. Thirty percent. That is what they determined in all their wisdom, as to what constituted the line between a person and a machine.
The crystal licking bootwaffles don't have a clue as to what constitutes life and sentience. My pingers are proof of that. They live, they laugh, they love. If that isn't life, then I don't know what is. I dare anyone to spend five minutes with my family, and tell me they aren't alive and self-aware.
Over half of Vashon's brain had been damaged in the battle; fifty-three percent to be exact. So the doctors could not operate, or they would be imprisoned for life or put to death if they did, depending on how the GOES representative here on Prime was feeling that day.
So Lady Peregrin turned to the Director of Sciences for Prime, Anna Germaine. Doctor Germaine was also the head of Covert Sciences, a group kept secret from even the Galactic Federation.
Doctor Germaine agreed, and she was able to replace the damaged portions of Vashon's brain. And because of another black project they were experimenting with which Vash had been assisting them with, they had a complete synaptic scan of her brain, and they were able to imprint it on the cybernetic implant.
This had saved Vashon's life, but an unintended consequence of the process was that all of my girl's old memories have no emotional component as the associations between each memory and the emotional reciprocal in another portion of her organic brain is not there. So every memory she has from before the operation is just raw data to her. She feels like she is just watching the memory or reading about it rather than experiencing it.
Her newer memories are all stored in her organic brain and have their emotional counterpart, so she views them as her real memories. The whole thing would be maddening to me. While stabilizing Vash here dirtside and hacking her systems and cobbling together makeshift power harnesses and control systems, I think I devised a plan to reunite her old memories and emotions. If anyone can make my concept work, it is Anna Germaine.
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br /> If anyone ever found out the extent of my girl's implants, the GOES would force an Asimov inhibitor chip on her, and view her simply as a pinger that needs to be controlled or put down.
Thus the need for Lady Peregrine to not openly transmit any information about her injuries on the airwaves. I appreciated what little she did share, as it had taken a huge weight off my shoulders. I was so in love with my Sky Guard ranger that my chest physically hurt with fear and worry for her after she left between lulls in the storms to go to Germaine's covert labs to be repaired.
And now that the PP, which had lasted a few days longer than anticipated, had now passed, normal communications should be restored to the floating cities when the ionization of the atmosphere settles down. I was almost giddy with excitement.
The great cities would start their descent back into the atmosphere in the next few days, riding the gravity wakes in the atmosphere, where there is an equilibrium between the gravitic up-currents and the static gravity well of the planet, to allow the cities to float above the surface in the sky. It is a phenomenon that is unique to Prime.
Then I could fly the Albatross, my open air tumbril, up to visit my girl as she recovers before I have to clear away the destruction the storms left in my Agri-Grid and replant the crops that will keep all the people in the Tau Ceti system from starving to death.
I looked at the boys who were congratulating Flower on her win, the scamps. Glitch looked over at me, his orb-shaped body swiveling on his mobility platform, sparks drizzling from below; I really needed to fix that for him, and he gave a shrug, and if the silly guy had a mouth I know he'd be smiling sheepishly. Not even he, my oldest friend, was immune to Flower's charms.
Fixit Adventures Anthology Page 15