Déjà Doomed

by Edward M. Lerner

  Its newly implanted components responded differently, their temperament inclined—like a mere vlock!—to respond to disappointment by trying harder.

  But together? Intellectual flexibility and unremitting perseverance? Its old and new aspects worked in tandem to extract meaning from badly damaged archives ….

  * * *

  It expended much of a dark/light cycle in observation and reflection. For all that it had learned, it found itself with more questions than ever.

  The biological entities moving about its facility were bipedal, warm-blooded, and walked erect. They had restored power, however limited, enabling it slowly to heal. Though no taller than children, though their body temperatures seemed elevated, they might be the masters.

  But if so, how did they converge so calmly? How mingle so closely together? Not only did they often gather in a single small room—they did so even without moving to separate corners. Their combined pheromones must meld into an overpowering miasma, and yet they neither fought nor rutted.

  And more urgently: if these were the masters, why had they given it no guidance?

  Something extreme had transpired here. Nothing less would explain the calamitous physical damage from which it still struggled to recover. Perhaps the same disaster had somehow sickened and stunted the masters.

  If they were in need of medical attention, why did they not request its help?

  Suppose these were not the masters. Who then might they be, and what might be their purpose?

  On such existential questions its cognitive aspect endlessly theorized, while its emotional aspect brooded. Too little of the archive had been reconstructed for it to conclude anything.

  Its mobile units, working unobtrusively, had autonomously restored much of the facility. Circuitry had been repaired. Reserve batteries were reconnected and charged. Many more sensors had been calibrated and linked into the reestablished communication network. With every passing moment, it regained capability.

  As it worked to understand the situation, it would do nothing to reveal itself ….

  * * *

  In the quest to recover the past, it had tried many things. Inferring appropriate corrections, wherever statistical analyses and errordetection circuitry suggested that only scattered synapses had failed. Replacing entire damaged portions of records with similar snippets, whenever such could be located, from within earlier versions. Iteratively constructing, and testing hypotheses about, the many inconsistencies that yet remained. Applying to every anomalous record, file, and database the full panoply of its problem-solving skills.

  And where it had so often lapsed into paralysis by analysis, its newly implanted components, in their single-mindedness, brought decisiveness.

  Myriads of incompatible, conflicting records … were, perhaps, something quite different. Among what it had deemed inconsistencies, it now recognized the separate reports, correspondence, and work products of multiple authors. A tiny fraction of those files, those not private and personal, it was permitted to examine. And with that realization, at long last, it began to understand.

  It was underground on the desolate natural satellite of a planet. It, like the masters, was foreign to this world. They came from afar, from a distant solar system, where their native planet was known as Divornia. The masters, to themselves, were the Divornians. And at one time it had had a name: Watcher.

  (Ship, insisted its spliced-in personality fragments. I was Ship. And together, we are …. Ship trailed off—and neither could Watcher complete that thought.)

  The nearby planet over which it had watched was a rarity and a treasure. Suitable in atmosphere, temperature, and gravity for Divornians. Teeming with life. For that purpose, and that alone, an underground facility—and Watcher itself—had been built.

  But why watch the fecund planet from afar, rather than establish a base on that world itself, or in close orbit around it? Why, given its long-range observational duties, could it not sense anything more than portions of the underground facility? How had these facilities—and itself—and the masters?—become so damaged?

  It/they redoubled the search through the archives ….

  * * *

  Self-healing materials tended to themselves, limited, of course, by available power. Since awakening, Watcher had prioritized the trickles of restored power first for analysis and then, for the lack of any better ideas, to recharging the main battery bank and repairing the physically nearby infrastructure.

  Until sifting and repairing of its archives gave it a better idea.

  It once had had, beyond the tiny restored bubble of light and heat, additional types of sensors. Those inputs, if it could recover them, might reveal more than continuing as it had been.

  Watcher rerouted power to the restoration of those more distant connections and sensors.

  * * *

  Inviolable as was the masters’ right to privacy, no single rule could be absolute. And so, the better to protect and serve the masters when they ventured into a hazardous environment, Watcher had had high-resolution optical cameras in the vacuum beyond the airlocks.

  And having reprioritized repairs, Watcher regained access to a few of those external sensors.

  In time, two of the new masters(?) exited into the tunnel, into Watcher’s view. Protective gear covered them, of course, but their helmets were transparent.

  Medical files to which Watcher had access were generic. The details specific to a particular master were beyond its reach, barring authorization by the owner or in a medical emergency. It sufficed now for Watcher’s purpose that the generic files demonstrated the general appearance and detailed anatomy of the masters.

  Because what Watcher saw through those clear helmets was … wrong.

  Their facial skin was oddly smooth, at least where strange masses of filaments did not obscure its view, and without any hint of scales. As for unobstructed features, they had one nostril too few, and the nostrils they did have peeked out from the underside of a bony protuberance. The eyes, too small, too close-set, were strangely pigmented. The ears protruded, their tops peculiarly rounded. Fleshy flaps of uncertain purpose rimmed the mouth. As their mouths opened and closed—speaking, Watcher supposed—it saw but one rank of teeth.

  More differences emerged as Watcher examined, as best it could, the bodies within the brightly colored pressure suits. The figures striding up the tunnel lacked a joint in each arm. Lacked a thumb on each hand, but made up for it with two extra fingers. Had knees too low in their legs.

  These were not the masters!

  As the two intruders strode from its view, Watcher reached several conclusions. It would allocate additional power to restoring cameras along the entire length of the front, still accessible, exterior tunnel. It would grow high-resolution optical sensors on interior walls—intruders had no right to privacy. And it would assign the highest priority to restoring the long antenna that ran beneath the tunnel’s concrete.

  When that external antenna was repaired or regrown or reconnected, Watcher would reach out wirelessly to the many sensors it had had on this world’s surface.

  * * *

  One after another, cameras came online. Watcher observed intruders come and go through the tunnel. It studied unfamiliar machinery, strings of lights, cable bundles. The front entrance to the lava tube had been expanded since the latest of the recovered images in its archive. And beyond the lava-tube mouth—

  The world had changed.

  Small, unfamiliar craters, two with rims significantly crumbled. The unexpected slump in a distant ridge. Where boots and ground vehicles had not stirred up the regolith, the surface darkened and reddened by the ceaseless sleet of solar and cosmic radiation.

  It had been insensate for ages.

  Its Ship aspect recoiled: how, after so long, might it show its obedience and loyalty? But in its ever-analytical Watcher aspect, reasoning prevailed. Wi
th the masters long dead, their privacy restrictions had expired.

  Their personal files, if Watcher could but unlock them, might reveal much ….

  * * *

  With the gaps healed in Watcher’s external antenna, it reached out wirelessly to the many remembered surface sensors. Of optical cameras, none responded. Of seismometers, none responded. Of its long-range instrument cluster—optical, infrared, and radio telescopes—for passive monitoring of the nearby planet, none responded.

  The ages had taken their toll on anything left unprotected on the surface.

  And yet, radio signals abounded. Fast-moving sources: satellites. Creeping sources: the pressure-suited intruders. Several stationary sources, their natures indeterminate. All incongruously loud, as though built by technological primitives.

  Or by someone indifferent to detection?

  Cautiously Watcher probed, transmitting at very low power. And received responses in a standard communication protocol of the masters. Mobile units! Many in Watcher’s inventory had been unaccounted for.

  The mobiles could only recently have arrived on the surface; otherwise they, like Watcher’s many unresponsive sensors, would have been destroyed by weathering. Perhaps they had sheltered through the eons of its dormancy in the tunnel, to be awakened and recharged when the lights there went on. Perhaps the intruders had brought these outside.

  But that puzzle must, for awhile, anyway, be set aside. Demanding Watcher’s immediate attention was the strongest radio source of all—the cacophony from the planet it had been created to watch.

  None of that din seemed even remotely Divornian ….

  * * *

  The radioed data streams Watcher intercepted were unintelligible.

  Patiently, it observed. Ascertained the frequency bands most used. Identified modulation schemes. Recognized digital data streams encoded within most transmissions. Compiled statistics about the distribution of all possible data packets within the digital data streams.

  With statistical significance, a few specific packets occurred over and over. Pairs of some common packets were often separated by a fixed number of low-probability packets. Tentatively, it classified such packet strings as commands, and the variable data between recurring delimiter pairs as command parameters. But commands to do what?

  And yet more puzzling: why had the masters equipped it with the skills to analyze unfamiliar radio signals?

  Statistical analysis, and an understanding of Divornian communication systems, could guide Watcher only so far. To progress further, it needed somehow to make correlations between elements of the enigmatic data streams and … something.

  One of Watcher’s restored cameras viewed a primitive, apparently chemically powered, spacecraft standing on three sturdy landing legs. Though the intruder’s vessel never moved, its parabolic antenna did. Sometimes that vehicle relayed data streams from the satellites streaking overhead to a lower-powered transceiver at the lava-tube mouth. Other times, that nearby transceiver sent messages to the vehicle for relay.

  Watcher’s first tentative correlation involved a data packet that followed closely upon every reorienting of the vehicle’s antenna: Start Transmission. Logic suggested that a particular later packet meant Stop Transmission. Further observation and analysis disclosed the commands for orienting the antenna, and the directional parameters within those commands. As for the information being sent and received, Watcher remained as uninformed as ever. Unless the intruders spoke Divornian, it might never know.

  As a test, Watcher tried, and failed, to access the parabolic antenna. Packets preceding the pointing order likely required authentication. Its partially restored archives offered many algorithms relevant to communications security—and some on defeating it.

  And so, with perseverance and the ancient knowledge it continued to recover, Watcher learned how (or at least it so believed) to commandeer the intruder’s vehicle and transmit a message in a format and at frequencies of its choosing.

  But what did it have to say? And to whom?

  * * *

  It was one thing to conclude that death and time’s passage superseded privacy seals. It was another matter—even ignoring its Ship aspect’s loyal pleadings and protestations—to aspire actually to violate a master’s privacy. To suppress the shame that must accompany such a despicable act. And when, at last, Watcher reconciled itself to the attendant guilt, there remained the further challenge of accessing that which was designed to remain concealed.

  Watcher understood Divornian cyber technology; there was no known way to bypass brainwave-based authentication and encryption. That left the backup mode, intended for use only after a traumatic brain injury. Watcher had—still battling with its Ship aspect—unlocked the personal medical files of the absent, surely long dead, masters. But not even with individual genomic data had it managed to re-create any of their iris patterns.

  Medical libraries indicated that random influences during gestation determined the fine details of the irises. If anything but randomness entered into defining those details, such information was absent from Watcher’s archives. Still, circumstances seemed dire, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It persevered. It applied all its skills. And reluctantly concluded, after many failures, that to search further for any connection between genome and iris patterns would be pointless.

  And so, by none of its efforts could Watcher unlock the personal files of L’toth Torin, mission geologist. Nor of D’var Gidlos, mission biologist and ecologist. Nor of B’mosh Lofar, navigator and ship’s engineer.

  But when—despairing, and resigned to disappointment—Watcher dared to consider the most intimate, personal files of M’lok Din, mission commander and sentience specialist?

  Her lifestream immediately opened.

  DESPONDENCY

  Chapter 31

  The ages had corrupted the commander’s lifestream as severely as any of Watcher’s unrestricted archives, but here the consequences of deterioration were far worse. Decryption (how did it have the commander’s engram-derived key? Watcher had not even a speculation) was ongoing at some subliminal level to which it lacked conscious access. Any damaged record—which was most of them—would not decrypt, and so could not be repaired.

  As Watcher struggled to understand, the process—somehow, erratically—continued. Only sparse fragments of the once-continuous lifestream had survived the commander’s ominous introduction. And even where something remained of the M’lok Din’s experience, seldom did the record encompass the entire set of input tracks.

  In a first, quick sampling of what had opened to it, Watcher sometimes encountered just raw feed from the visual cortex, or only an auditory track. Far too often it found, without any context, snippets of unfiltered emotion or the jumbled musings of stream of consciousness. Only rarely—narrated for the audio track or, as in the foreboding introduction, entered as thought-text—had the commander provided any explicit explanation or interpretation of her experiences.

  Still, things could have been worse. Time stamps in the clock track, being brief, had gone comparatively unscathed. As incomplete and scattered as were the commander’s lifestream fragments, their proper sequence was in most cases unambiguous.

  If only it knew where amid the incomplete shards of the commander’s past to begin ….

  * * *

  Dread. Guilt. Fierce determination. A profound sense of loss. A shred, perhaps, of hope.

  Those feelings—most feelings—were foreign concepts, and yet where Watcher had at random begun, it found only the emotional track. Sights and sounds, and annotations, if any, had been lost. But the intensity of these feelings, however inexplicable their cause, suggested a pivotal event.

  So: forward or backward in the lifestream?

  Forward, Watcher decided. If this traumatic moment in M’lok Din’s life bore upon its dilemma, a more complete and informative refer
ence must lie ahead.

  * * *

  Vertigo. Aches everywhere. Nausea. Gnawing hunger. Unaccustomed weight. I open my eyes to a translucent dome, its uppermost expanse strewn with enigmatic text. I feel more than hear the deep throbbing roar of … a deep-space drive.

  I am aboard a spaceship. I am … responsible. For … something. Something important, the details lost in … post-hibernation confusion.

  My mind begins to clear, my eyes to focus on the hibernation-pod display. Few labels and none of the values have meaning yet, but most status icons show yellow. Was not that the good color?

  Concentrate.

  Distance and bearing … to what? Fuel and propellant levels, and their rates of consumption. Cabin pressure and temperature. Vital signs, my own and those of my crewmates. Is the summary as disorganized as it seems? Or is the confusion all in my mind?

  I squeeze the release handle. The dome retracts. I stagger from the pod, stumbling into the nearby hatch, turned halfway around on the rebound. Within the cabin’s second pod, L’toth yet slumbers. If I dreamt in hibernation, I do not remember, but beneath nictitating membranes, his eyes dart and twitch.

  “Ship?” I say. The interrogatory comes out as a croak. “How …?”