Activation Degradation, page 27
Startled, it spun, holding up a guarding forearm.
“It’s me,” Maya said quickly, throwing her hands up. “It’s just me.”
Aimsley hadn’t realized until now how heavily it was breathing, how tightly it clenched its jaw. How everything in it was coiled like a spring.
“I’ll take it to the hangar,” she said, nodding at One’s wilted form.
“Then the supplies? You think you can manage?” it asked.
“Arm-G, right?”
It nodded. “Right.”
“I’ve got it,” she assured. “Go do what you need to do.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
As expected, as soon as it had begun its fight with One, Aimsley had been stripped of its digital permissions. Wireless access to all platform sectors and information was now denied.
The warning lights and verbal message it had awoken to were now back—blaring, screeching across the entire platform.
“What are you doing, Four?” its handler asked in its head. “What did they do to you on that ship?”
“Told me the truth,” it said as it floated into arm-A, toward the soft-lined controls. It could still physically interface, and it had already created the backdoors it needed to be given access.
“Which is what? That they killed their world, abandoned it, and now want it back?”
“You knew—you’ve known this whole time what they are and where they come from.”
“They come from beyond the solar system,” they said harshly, a sneer evident in their voice. “They’re invaders. Conquerors. Would-be colonizers who simply didn’t find anything they sufficiently wanted to strip and ruin out there, so they decided to take a second stab at our world.”
“They were refugees searching for a new home. For all of them. All of humanity.”
Its handler let out a small punch of a laugh. “Ha. Refugees. Is that what they call themselves? You can’t take refuge from a problem you created. What have you seen? What did they show you? Children in rags aboard their ships? Shabby tin cans and oil-blackened bulkheads? Did they show you what their starships looked like when they left? Who was aboard? You think them downtrodden, so noble. Do you know what percentage of the population left the planet? What their demographics were? Who among them was able to run from their problems?”
“What does it matter?”
“Because they weren’t searching for a new home for humanity. They were trying to save their own hides.”
Aimsley wanted to spit out, I don’t believe you.
But it couldn’t.
Because it did believe its handler.
It had seen the opulence peeking out from behind the dilapidation. There had been a splendor to the Harbors once. And people fleeing for their lives on desperate missions didn’t have time for splendor.
“What does it matter?” it asked again, its tone harsh with underlying anger. It reached the hatch for the control room, slipping inside. “That was over a thousand years ago. Whoever those people were that left the planet, they’re gone.”
“As though history is not a through-line? As though the actions of those who come before do not dictate the circumstances of the future? When a person dies, all they did does not cease to have an effect. Their descendants will benefit or be bereft, portions of society will be bold or crumble, based on the actions of the now-dead. The living are still responsible for those consequences, whether they want to be or not.”
Inside the control room, the meaty consoles were covered in rippling expanses of flesh and fingertips, delicate areolas and softly parted lips. This was the platform’s main control center, where all of its internal functionality was managed.
Aimsley slipped two digits between a set of open orifices, twitching lightly, letting its biomechanical signals translate into access information. Chromatophores on a nearby surface blinked a bold red, alerting it that the backup stabilizers were down. Buyer and Jonas had been successful.
Now the two of them would be looting all they could from the inside. Carving up the platform just as Aimsley had helped Fuentes and Maya carve up the boat.
“Are you listening, Four?” its handler demanded.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I want you to come back to us. To understand that whatever they’ve sold you—whether it’s a sob story or a promise of utopia—is a lie.”
“They haven’t promised me utopia.” Far from it. “But they’ve promised me a life. More time.”
“That’s more consideration than they ever gave their brethren who were left behind.” The bitterness was palpable in its handler’s voice.
Changing the platform’s trajectory was no hardship. Aimsley guided it into a gently degrading orbit, one dangerous enough to need immediate attention if there was any hope of course correcting, but not so steep as to prevent Aimsley and the crew from finishing what they started and getting away with their prizes.
A new set of warnings immediately cropped up, alerting everyone to the platform’s peril.
“If you do this,” its handler said, “millions on Earth will lose power. Nearly a third of the population. People will die.”
“Then you better come stop it,” Aimsley said, laying in the confirmation, hitting execute.
“You’re going to regret this.”
The statement didn’t come off as a threat, the way Aimsley had expected. Its handler didn’t sound angry. They sounded . . . devastated.
“You’re going to have so many regrets,” they said softly.
Aimsley didn’t have time to think about that now. It only needed to focus on one thing: saving its sisters, making sure no more were grown and suffered and died here ever again.
Even if its handler arrived and was able save the platform, it wanted there to be no salvaging the reconstitution pods.
When it stepped through the door to the reconstitution room, Aimsley reeled. It had to prop itself up in the doorway for a moment, the sense of déjà vu was so strong, so disorienting. It had only been a few days since it had sprung, fully formed, from a pod. But it felt like forever ago, and it felt like now, and it felt like a dream that had never really happened.
The beautiful, awe-inspiring bands of Jupiter still swirled by, past the window. The clouds were thick and poisonous, but mesmerizing.
It shook its head, focusing, hurrying to the closest pod.
It glanced in, feeling sick.
A partially grown skeleton lay inside, bones already turning silver with plating. Wispy bits of sinew floated about the form in a protein bath, twitching—alive, yet not living. Not yet graphed. Parts of a body, but not a person.
Aimsley knew what this was—who it was supposed to become.
It was the next Unit One. The current Unit One was supposed to be returned to the adjoining pod, and then as it dissolved, its process memories—but none of its feelings, its personhood—would be transferred to this new individual.
And this would happen over and over. Creation and death, creation and death, occurring at hyperspeed.
Aimsley didn’t know how long the platform had been in existence, how many activation and deactivation cycles had passed—how many people had been born and died here without ever knowing where they’d come from or what other kind of life they could have had.
Hundreds? Thousands?
No more.
It crouched down next to the bulk of the pod and pried open an access panel on the side.
Aimsley had already disabled the fire suppression system. Now it just needed a few sparks. It set the last two chemical barrels aside for a moment, then went to work pulling at the wires, severing connections and weakening soldered points.
A deep satisfaction warmed its chest as a flame sprang to life—as it took, grew, spread.
Even in here, there were enough open organics to feed the fire. It just had to hope the conflagration would find its way deep, into the vats.
There were enough flammable chemicals aboard that it might even have explosions to look forward to.
Despite the danger, it continued to watch the flames rise for a few moments more. Until the smoke started to curl, black and dense, against the ceiling.
It thought about its handler’s strange reaction to its betrayal. Sadness, not anger.
They had claimed to care about the AMS units. Perhaps they thought they did.
You can grow attached to a hammer. It’s still a hammer.
You can think you care for someone, and still utilize them—abuse them—like a tool.
The blaze grew, bright and hungry. With the remaining chemical barrels clutched to its chest, Aimsley slowly retreated, through the door.
It hurried back toward the hub. It would close the fire doors at the end of the arm as soon as it was through, make sure everyone else was protected.
“Stop!”
The shout hadn’t come from inside Aimsley’s head, nor the comms unit. It took a moment for it to realize the sound had come from behind.
Swiftly, it spun, ready for a fight.
As soon as its handler had rescinded permissions, Aimsley had lost track of its sisters—their locations were no longer gentle pings inside its mind.
It knew where Three was, where One and Two had been. But . . .
Four. New Four.
It must have been hiding in the reconstitution wing’s waste room.
It looked just like Aimsley, of course. All of its sisters looked the same. But this one, this one was supposed to be Aimsley. Be the unit that had been lost in the dogfight.
Behind New Four, smoke roiled, and the light flickered. Soon the arm would be choked with fumes. Aimsley, in its suit, would be fine. New Four, naked and vulnerable, would not.
“Stop,” New Four said again. “Help me put out the fire.”
“I started the fire,” Aimsley said.
“I know,” Four replied evenly.
“You were ordered to decommission me.”
“The integrity of the platform comes first. Help me put out the fire.”
Aimsley rolled the two remaining barrels in its palm, took calculated, floating steps forward. “No.”
New Four backed away, the simulated gravity still keeping the pads of its bare feet firmly against the floor.
The two of them were so close, yet worlds away.
“You can’t put out the fire,” Aimsley told it. “I’ve disabled the—”
“I have to,” it said firmly. “I will.”
Aimsley kept advancing. New Four kept retreating. Behind it, flames started to lick out of the reconstitution room, into the arm.
“You’ll suffer a painful deactivation if you go back in there,” Aimsley said.
“I don’t care!” it shouted, tears in its eyes.
“Yes, you do!”
“No!”
“Come with me!” Aimsley yelled, holding out its hand in desperate invitation. “Come with us, we can help you.”
But its sister continued its retreat, the wary expression on its face twisting, turning into scandalization and anger and hurt. “No! I have to stay with the platform. We’re all supposed to protect the platform, the mine. That’s our purpose. What we were made for.”
“You shouldn’t have been made for anything!” Aimsley shouted back. “And the one who made you does not own you. It is wrong to claim ownership of a sentience. It’s wrong to lie to a sentience to subvert its will. It’s wrong to force a sentience to give up its life for nothing more than the convenience and comfort of others.
“I know you want to do good. I know you want to help people—and you should. You should always try to help others. But the Earthlings sacrifice nothing for us, and we sacrifice everything for them. Are forced to. Please understand. Please. I only want to help you. To give you . . . time. Come with me.”
“Your processing has degraded, you’re malfunctioning! You’re destroying everything—destroying us! This doesn’t help us.”
“It stops the cycle. Ends the activation and the decommissioning and the utilization.”
“It ends your fellow units,” New Four yelled. “It destroys the vats, kills us.”
“Come with me and I will explain.”
“No! Traitor! If I could I would decommission you here, this moment. But I have to do what I can to save what you’ve ruined.”
“You will not be successful,” Aimsley insisted. “There’s no time.”
“It is my purpose, and I will not abandon it!”
With that, New Four turned, fled, disappearing into the wafts of smoke and rising flames.
“No!” A surge of horror rocked through Aimsley, blotting out all else. It lunged forward with one of the two charges outstretched, made to follow its sister—to save the unit—but there was nothing to be done.
A wall of fire rushed into the arm.
Aimsley dropped the vial, threw its arm in front of its face, but not before the realization hit it as squarely as the blast of heat:
New Four was gone.
Aimsley had to turn, to hurry in the opposite direction, if it did not want to succumb to the same pointless end.
A string of curse words poured in from the comms unit as Aimsley reached the center hub once more, echoing its own internal lamentations. It let out a choked-off cry as it forced itself to lower the fire doors, to cut the reconstitution wing off from the rest of the platform, sealing New Four inside.
It wasn’t supposed to go this way.
Aimsley had thought it could save them all.
The memory of decommissioning Unit Two came back, fresh and visceral. How awful that end had to have been for its sister unit. The echoes of those moments shook Aimsley—still would, it predicted, for the rest of its life—even though it had only known Unit Two for less than an hour.
It couldn’t imagine what New Four was suffering right now. Couldn’t imagine watching them in pain, watching them expire, knowing they deserved more time. Knowing they deserved peace, and happiness.
A respite.
But not a permanent rest. Not death.
Not like this.
“Fuck! Shit!” Fuentes shouted over the comms.
“What? Fuentes? Come in. What is it?” Buyer demanded.
“Aimsley’s handler,” she gritted out. “They’re here.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Run. Run, do you hear me?” Buyer’s voice crackled through the comms unit. “Fuentes, get the ship out of here. Now.”
“No. Why the fuck would I—?”
“We want them focused on the platform. Don’t engage. Hide. There’s no saving any of us if they take you out.”
“Fine. Copy that.”
“Aimsley, we’re all in the hangar. Where are you?” the captain demanded.
“On my way.”
Regret. Yes, now it felt regret. But it couldn’t stop. It had made a choice, and it would follow through.
“There’s something coming,” Buyer said. “A new ship. I can see it. It’s still a ways off, but approaching fast.”
“Get out of sight,” Aimsley told him, climbing into arm-C.
“You can’t hide them from me,” its handler growled.
“I can try,” it shot back.
Aimsley threw open its jets, shooting forward, rocketing down the arm and toward the hangar.
When it arrived, the wing appeared empty. The others had hidden, just as it had told them. Perhaps they were in the control room on its left. Perhaps they’d tucked themselves behind the half-built boat hulls to the right. Perhaps they’d slipped out altogether, were now crawling along the platform’s outsides.
Regardless, Aimsley now felt alone. It watched the new ship—its handler’s ship—approach, becoming a large silver dot against the starry backdrop, then a smudge, and a disk, then filling the open hangar door and settling inside.
The ship was about the same size as a boat—large enough for a single occupant, if the interior was organic. Two, perhaps, if it was purely mechanical like the wedge.
The design was sleek and silver. The body egg-shaped, but faceted, with long flutes off the top and down the sides that must have been maneuvering jets, what with the way they flexed and fanned away from the shiny hull. Like the boats, there was no apparent window, nothing to indicate which way the pilot faced or where they sat.
A long set of multi-jointed landing gear extended to the decking, suspending the ship well above the flooring on three legs. The ends were thin and pointed, but fanned outward, splitting into three fingers—into a tripodal configuration that could easily be called a grasping pad.
As the ship settled into place, with a blast of gasses and a jerk of hydraulics, Aimsley held its ground. It stared at the nose, hands flung outward, wide, to show its handler it had no weapons—though it did not conceal the fact that it held one last chemical charge in its hand.
“Finally come to confront us?” it asked after the ship had gone still. It waited for a gangplank to extend or a hatch to open.
Waited for evidence of what it already knew: there were no aliens here.
“Do you intend to use that on me?” its handler asked, switching from the language of the platform to All Harbors, as though to make a point. To indicate there could be no clandestine communications between Aimsley and the humans.
“What, this?” Aimsley asked, brandishing the barrel, switching seamlessly to All Harbors as well.
“Yes.”
“Only if I have to.”
“I think you might be sorely disappointed by the results, little bot.”
“I’m not a robot,” it said firmly. And, for the first time, it felt the notion in its bones. “Why didn’t you tell me I was human? Why hide it from me?”
“Why would I debase you like that?”
Aimsley’s brow furrowed. For a moment, it was wrong-footed. “What?”
“Why would I align you with the climate killers and the abandoners? Why would I make you feel less than you are by equating you with one of them?”
“Them? What about you? Are you not a descendant of those they abandoned? Aren’t you just as human as they are? We all are?”
Its handler let out a low, rumbling laugh.
