Activation Degradation, page 20
Doc and Maya gripped it tightly, and it felt an echo of how it had been manhandled by Maya and Fuentes when it had first come onboard. But this guiding touch was different. The way they clutched at it wasn’t demanding, wasn’t tense. There was no fear any of them would lash out. The first time had been clawing. This was steadying.
Reassuring.
It shouldn’t be reassuring. Nothing here was reassuring.
Was this sensation proof it was in the midst of being compromised? Of slipping away, of no longer—
As they pushed it forward, it tried to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, on pushing the damaging speculations aside. On getting its thoughts straight enough to note where they were going.
They were moving it into a new part of the ship.
Sections of its mind wanted to take it all in. This was new, it had to observe and analyze. New was important. Vital.
But every time it tried to commit a new portion of the ship’s layout to memory, one hundred years flashed through its thoughts.
A hundred years.
A hundred years.
If not for the radiation of Jovian space—if not for the Earthlings?—it could have lived one hundred years.
The bunk room was just as its name implied. There were six frames, but only four mattresses, and each had its own set of doors—like the cabinets in the medbay. All of them sat open, and Aimsley could see various personal accoutrements set out on shelves adjoined to the beds.
Doc and Maya tossed it face-first onto one of the mattresses. The bedding was in disarray, tangled, but it couldn’t bring itself to mind.
Maya’s scent filled its nose, its lungs.
The scent was helpful, gave it something pleasant to focus on.
But the chanting in its brain wouldn’t stop.
. . . one hundred years one hundred years one hundred years . . .
“Aimsley,” Doc said softly. “I want to give you a sedative. I know you don’t like being knocked out, but—”
“Please,” it groaned, and its voice sounded foreign and unnatural to its own ears. “Please, just make it stop.”
Its arm was pulled aside, the yellow suit ripped open and the sleeve of Jonas’s shirt pushed up over its port.
It barely sensed the small thrust of the needle. It could barely sense anything but a deep foreboding.
Gentle fingers petted at the back of its neck, and Maya mumbled soothing nonsense while the chemicals worked their way into its body.
. . . one hundred years one hundred . . .
Soon, the anxiety became dulled—an aching throb—and gave way to exhaustion and fitful sleep.
When it awoke again, it could sense eyes on it, so it kept its own shut.
Though it felt better, everything was still largely awful. It could feel the panic just beneath the surface, threatening to bubble up and break free again. But at least the sense of impending failure—the utter certainty of its own end, its own doom—had receded.
It hated that it had been waiting for a moment of invasion—for a mind-fuck—and when the moment had come, it had still been caught off guard.
The lie had still wormed its way in, seizing its functions.
It had thought the invasion would come from subversive programming, rather than straight from one of the co-opted units. That had been its mistake. It had assumed, and paid the price.
And now, Aimsley knew what it had to do. It had to make itself discoverable again, because it needed to search the wedge’s databanks. There had to be evidence aboard that proved what Maya said was false.
But it didn’t want to open itself up so soon after being thrown off kilter. It already felt vulnerable, attacked.
It knew it wouldn’t take more than another light push to send it spiraling again.
If it didn’t locate the proof, however, it would keep wondering. It would keep turning her words over and over. The lie would keep troubling it unless Aimsley could squash it, dismantle it, as soon as possible.
Steeling itself, burrowing farther into the blankets, into the softness of the pillow and the sweetness of Maya’s scent, it opened itself up to the wedge.
A flood of pings immediately assaulted it. Each one felt like a needle or a knife stabbing into its mind.
With a frantic intake of breath and a sudden tightness in its chest, it cut itself off again, overwhelmed.
It hoped whoever else was in the room simply thought its distress unconscious.
You can do this, it told itself. Focus.
It tried again.
The pings still hurt, but it was ready for them this time. It pushed through the pain, looking not for the control centers of the ship, but the communication and reference files.
Histories.
Realities.
Its mind surfed gently through the systems, until it felt like it was swaying, rocking, as it drifted from this device to that device.
Long minutes passed before it found something of interest.
Video files.
Very, very old files.
It flicked through them in rapid succession.
Each was antiquated, the picture two dimensional. And the connections between whatever had been transmitting and whatever had been receiving had either been faulty or weak. The colors seemed dull, muted. Washed out. The audio tracks were plagued by constant white noise—a crackling static, a windy hum, and a steady drip. And whoever or whatever was responsible for the pictures’ framing had been unsteady—the panning was inconsistent, the camerawork shaky.
“. . . and here you can see the valley floor,” said an unseen narrator in one. “We’ve got the slot-bots doing all the metal work, and Maze’s team is over there—Hi Maze!”
The images had clearly been taken on a planet. Its atmosphere was yellowed. Sickly. Gritty dust wafted into the camera lens, and dark, bowed, withered plants of some kind flopped violently back and forth with the slightest of winds.
Large, metal monstrosities strode across the wide, flat plains that spanned between two craggy mountain ranges. Each metal creature had four thin, stilt-like legs, with bowing struts, which carried the beast. Several of them roamed together, in packs or swarms or caravans. When a group stopped, near a building, those legs burrowed deep into the soil, and smaller, insectoid-like devices spilled out of the round middle chassis.
A human wearing a thick mask over the bottom of its face waved, then jogged off toward the metal creatures.
Aimsley couldn’t tell where they were. What planet this was. It opened another file.
The new video showed several test tubes filled with water samples spread across a table. In the background, someone was talking about water quality. “As you can see, the concentration of microplastic particles per liter is approaching acceptable consumable levels. The new filtration system has been remarkably effective . . .” It could read the labels, and each sample was apparently from the same lake, taken over many decades. The liquid in the test tubes was getting clearer, more like the water Aimsley was used to.
Several different kinds of similar spreads were set before the camera. Soil samples, ice cores, plant leaves. There was even a close-up of some kind of bacterium, through a microscope.
Were these videos from the planets Maya had mentioned? The places they’d found Melassani’s Crystals? They all had that same yellowed sky and reddish sun, though. All appeared to be the same single planet.
Aimsley closed the video, opened another.
“And the dust from the nukes has mostly cleared from the jet stream,” said a human, pointing at what appeared to be a paper map. “It’s settled over Antarctica now, which actually seems to be helping regrow the ice caps, so, you know, lucky us,” they chuckled. “But, anyway, we uh, we hope you get this. We wanted—well, some of us. We wanted to invite you back to Earth. I know you didn’t expect any of us to still be alive, but here we are. Kicking. As best we can—holding on. Surviving. Maybe you found it, out there. But maybe you didn’t. We’ll welcome you back. We will. Then we can all work together. To finish this.”
No.
More lies, it thought.
These couldn’t be images of Earth.
Aimsley searched its databanks, brought up all images it had of Earth, flipping through them at a rapid-fire pace. Not even the images of the harshest desert sandstorms made the air look that clogged, that putrid.
It went back to the connection. Another video in the wedge’s files showed more humans. They looked thin. Frail. And young. But not young in a fresh way, young in an undeveloped way.
Were these children?
Their ribs were prominent, their large skulls set on bodies so skeletal it looked as though they might topple over from the weight. Their eyes bulged in their sockets, and their skin looked flakey, sallow.
None of this was right.
None of this was real. It couldn’t be.
These had to be fabrications. Had to be. And yet, if these were falsehoods, the work put into them was astounding. Each file was so comprehensive. Nothing jumped out as obviously faked. Aimsley scrutinized every layer of metadata and still couldn’t find a single detail that confirmed the forgery.
Frantically, it went through more files, determined to locate the evidence it knew existed—the thing that would prove none of this was real, that Maya’s stories were a lie, that Aimsley—
That Aimsley was really a robot.
Not a human. Not an animal.
It made another involuntary whimper, and someone was by its side in an instant.
It didn’t open its eyes. It couldn’t. It couldn’t face whoever it was.
More images. More videos. More absurdity.
The more files it opened, the broader the lie became.
Lies were supposed to unravel the more details they acquired. But this—
There was nothing that suggested Maya had told it anything but the truth.
It didn’t understand. This made no sense. This was terribly, woefully illogical—
Aimsley felt the panic surging again, the failure-state looming once more. It cried out.
More chemicals were shoved into its port.
Just before it blacked out, a small pulsing in the back of its head reminded it to examine the diagnostic scan’s results.
With trepidation, Aimsley opened the alert:
No invasive programming found.
“Aimsley?” asked a far-off voice. “Are you awake?”
Doc. Doc was watching it.
More time had passed. Hours? It couldn’t tell.
Maybe it’s been decades, it thought bitterly.
Opening its eyes with an effort, it sat up, pulling the pillow into its lap. Doc occupied the bunk cupboard opposite Maya’s. If Aimsley had to guess, the cupboard was likely their own.
“Are you feeling any better?” Doc asked.
“Yes. But my head hurts.”
Everything it had learned—had seen—came flooding back.
It immediately pushed the information away.
If it focused its thoughts too firmly on anything it had learned about humans, a surge of anxiety made its lips go numb and its vision tunnel.
“Normally I would tell you to do what relaxes you, some activity you find soothing,” Doc said. “To help you level yourself out. But I’m guessing you don’t know what you find soothing.”
“I find this soothing,” it said, holding out the pillow. “It’s soft, and smells like Maya.”
Doc smiled fondly. “Maybe don’t tell Maya that.”
“Oh. Why?”
“You just met her.”
Aimsley frowned.
“We talked about privacy, and that goes hand in hand with intimacy. The way people smell is intimate.” Doc stood, came forward to pat Aimsley on the shoulder. “It’s all right, don’t worry about it.”
It was definitely going to worry about it.
No sooner had they fallen silent than Maya herself came through the door.
“Hey,” she greeted Aimsley delicately.
“Hey,” it replied, embarrassed—Doc’s words hung in the forefront of its mind.
“I’m sorry we didn’t put clean sheets on for you. Shit, must have been months since I’ve changed the bedding.”
“It’s fine.”
Doc stood. “You’ll be all right on your own for a while?” they asked Maya.
“Yeah.”
They nodded, clapped Maya on the back, and left.
She and Aimsley were alone. And quiet.
The silence stretched for an uncomfortable moment.
“I understand if you don’t want to talk right now,” she said eventually. “But I’m here if you . . . I mean, I just know I would need to . . . if . . . you know.”
It nodded.
The sound of Maya’s voice seemed to be helping settle its anxiety as much as her scent. Her nearness, her warmth—it was all calming in a way Aimsley couldn’t comprehend. It wasn’t logical. Both Maya and Doc had made overtures of connection toward the AMS unit, but it was only Maya that sent this unusual glow through its body.
“Can I?” she gestured next to it.
“It’s your bed,” it said, remembering her argument from earlier. “You can have whoever you want in it.”
Maya made an abashed sort of laugh. “I—” she started, but then shook her head, glanced away. “That’s not quite what that means, but I suppose that’s a cultural nuance for later.” She sat down.
Aimsley clutched the pillow all the tighter.
It had things it wanted to ask, and things it couldn’t bring itself to ask.
There had been no proof. No evidence that anything it had seen or heard aboard the wedge was false. Which meant there wasn’t any invasive programming for it to dodge. These robots—humans—hadn’t been reprogrammed. The rosa fantasma was only as alien as Maya had said, and the crystals they wore—the crystal she had on now—was inert and shiny, nothing more.
It meant Earth . . .
Everything felt shifted, unbalanced. One moment Aimsley had simply been trying to figure out how to gain trust and stay afloat until its handler could arrive, and the next—
Oh.
Its handler.
Fuck.
How long had Aimsley been asleep? Its handler had said three days, which had to be broaching two by now.
Its handler was coming for it. Coming for all of them.
At this point, what did that even mean?
Aimsley had been planning for a rescue, but if what the humans claimed was true, that meant . . .
That meant they were all in danger.
Because its handler had to know the truth. They had to know Aimsley was human, they had to know the invaders were human. They had to know Aimsley might discover the truth. That it would bring back that truth, and it would tell its sisters.
Its sisters.
Its sisters, who were going to die. Who thought they should only be activated for mere months before being dissolved in acid and returned to the vats. Who believed the life they led was right, and the deactivations they received were proper. Were necessary.
Which brought something into even starker relief: it wasn’t just everyone aboard the wedge who was in danger—so was everyone aboard the platform.
“Aimsley?”
It didn’t know what to do. It felt adrift. When it had activated, it had been given a goal, a purpose. A clear way forward.
Now . . . it didn’t know what to do.
Part Four
Earthling
Chapter Sixteen
“It’s a lot to process, I know,” Maya said. After a brief pause, she laughed at herself. “Or I don’t know, really. I have no idea what it’s like, having everything you think is true utterly upended.”
A welling in Aimsley’s eyes blurred its vision. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” it croaked. “Everything was simple. My activation, my life, was simple.”
She wrapped her arms around it, and it fell heavily against her chest. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What they did to you is fucked up.”
Its mouth went dry, its cheeks grew hot.
“Come on,” she said lightly, running a comforting hand up and down its spine. “It’s been a while since you’ve eaten. You might not be hungry, but let’s get some food in you. Some fluids.” She encouraged it to sit up.
Aimsley wanted to drift. To float. To sail away into itself, a blurred semiconsciousness, where it could be safe and warm in Maya’s presence and not have to think about anything more strenuous than the play of light and shadow over the backs of its eyelids.
But there was not time to indulge in such a fugue state. There wasn’t even enough time to weigh its options—its beliefs—carefully. Its handler was coming, and their arrival would herald a tipping point.
It could go back to what it knew: the platform, the AMS units, the mine, the radiation, and the expected three-month activation period.
Or it could take a chance on everything it had seen and heard here aboard the wedge. It could seize the opportunity—however slim—for more. More life, more space, more connection.
But it could not, in good conscience, seize that opportunity for itself alone.
“Yeah, okay,” it said flatly, letting her guide it to its feet, then to the door, and back up to the bridge deck.
All the while it thought about what could be lost and what could be gained. What could be true and what could be fabrication. It had to make a choice—elect not just a course of action, but a reality.
Which universe did it really live in?
Everything hinged on the answer.
It picked slowly at its light meal of baked tofu and sweet potato. The scents and tastes were muted, and Aimsley still didn’t feel like it had fully come back, was fully seated in its own body. It still needed time.
Maya asked Doc if she could give it some tea and honey, to which they replied, “Yes tea, no honey.”
Maya sat with it in the booth while it ate. The other crewmembers shifted in and out of Aimsley’s space like visions—they were little more than roving bodies it barely noted as it tried to order its thoughts and its life.
