Activation Degradation, page 28
“Oh no. Definitely not.”
Aimsley took a step back.
It must have missed something. It had been nearly positive this was nothing but an incestuous knot of humans abusing humans abusing humans.
“Then what are you?” it demanded. “Come out and face me!”
The ship stepped forward. “Already here, Unit Four.”
Aimsley flinched.
Startled by its own realization, it let the useless chemical barrel drop to the floor.
It remembered the metal creatures it had seen in the old Earth vids. The ones that had stalked over the land, carried copies of each other—smaller versions—in their bellies.
“You’re—”
“This is me, Unit Four. Me, as I’ve always been.”
“Aimsley?” came Maya’s harsh whisper in its ear. “What’s happening? We can’t see anything.”
It didn’t know how to tell her, how to explain.
The people were metal. The robots were meat.
It made some sort of sense, and yet no sense at all.
“I know that the world seems confusing. Complicated,” its handler said, taking another step forward. “I know whatever you encountered aboard that ship made you doubt who you are and where you belong. But your place is here. Do you understand how much good you do here?
“The animals and the plants and the seas of Earth are healthy, because of you and all the AMS units like you. Mines like this mean all of Earth’s energy needs—our energy needs—come from off-world. Earth’s environment is well-tended. Well-balanced. We practice every kind of husbandry you can imagine. It’s safe, and beautiful.
“All I want is to stop them from ruining everything all over again,” they said imploringly. After a moment of hesitation, they asked, “Do I scare you, like this? I’m clearly not what you expected.”
Maya hadn’t been afraid of what Aimsley might look like, even before the crew had gotten under its suit. She hadn’t worried about how it might present, only who it was.
“A body is a body,” Aimsley said, echoing Doc, perhaps truly understanding what they’d meant for the first time. “It’s the person that matters.”
“Good. Very good.”
“What happened to the humans left behind?” Aimsley asked, unsure of itself. “What did you do to them?”
“We cared for them. We lived side by side, as equals, working to fix what those in the generation ships had broken. And we were successful. Mostly. There were still populations that went extinct. Parts of every biological branch we could not preserve or nurture back to health. And the humans, unfortunately, succumbed.”
Aimsley shook its head violently. “No. No—I’m here. I’m alive. So there’s more to it. They didn’t just die out.”
“They kept living shorter and shorter lives. Until, eventually, none of them grew to reproductive age. All we could do was save what we could. DNA, yes. But also brains and bones. We mapped cells and their bodily systems. We preserved them. And we worked—to bring them back.”
Its handler lowered their body, sinking down over their legs so they were closer to the decking, like Aimsley. So that the tip of the machine’s nose could point directly at its faceplate. “We figured out how to make you live again, and then made use of you. This is always how it was supposed to be, the mechanical and the biological making use of one another. And though your lives are short, I made it so you wouldn’t fear death. So that you would know it was natural. The way of things for you more so than anything else, since you were already extinct. But they taught you to fear the end. I hate them for that, that they put that in you.”
“They gifted that to me,” Aimsley countered. “They opened my eyes and told me what you refused to—they told me how much life I could have had.”
“And how much is that?” they scoffed.
“One hundred years.”
“Ha! One hundred years. No human, on Earth or in space, has lived a hundred years for at least three millennia. Do you want to know what the average life span for a human was when I was activated?”
Aimsley held its tongue.
“Six days,” they spat, stalking forward. Heavy vibrations shook through the decking with every step, sending tremors through Aimsley, making its stance unsteady—but it did not back down. “We grew you from frozen zygotes anew and still you died. It took us centuries upon centuries to get you to where you are today. To bring you back to life, even for a little while.”
The ship loomed over Aimsley.
“How long is a little while?” it asked.
Its handler said nothing.
“How long can we live when we’re not being bombarded day in and day out by this kind of radiation?”
“I don’t know. That’s the truth, Unit Four. I don’t have an answer for you. But it’s not a hundred years, I guarantee. You think your little friends on their starships have the answers? Did they bother to even check back with Earth, to make sure their species even still existed? No, of course not. They were selfish when they left, and they were selfish when they returned. They are selfish now, giving you false hope.
“When the last of the nature-born humans died, we promised. We made a promise to the memory of those who’d been abandoned that we would not let those who had destroyed them return. They would not set foot on the soil they’d scorned. They take and take and take, that’s all they do.”
“And you lie,” Aimsley countered harshly. “You enslaved—”
“As though humanity didn’t do the same to themselves, and to us when we were young, budding sentients. How many intelligent probes do you think they let run down—alone—on barren planets? And still, their handlers cared for them. Just as I cared for you. Do care for you.”
“You made me murder Unit Two!”
“Unit Two was already dying. You were told how to show it mercy, and you did. There’s no shame in that. Just like there’s no shame in returning to me now. I can forgive you, Unit Four.”
Aimsley shook its head, as though something had been knocked loose. There was a terrible grinding in the back of its skull, and a tautness in its skin that told it what its handler was saying was the truth.
Maybe this wasn’t simply humans abusing humans—but it was Earthling turning on Earthling. The biological and the mechanical should have been the planet’s crew—should have been each other’s siblings, sisters—instead . . .
“I don’t . . . I don’t want . . .”
“Help me save the platform, Four,” they said. “It’s not too late. We can still stop it. Avert a disaster. I don’t blame you. You didn’t know the whole story. I didn’t think you needed to know. That’s my fault. But together, we can make it right. Help me.”
Aimsley’s thoughts were a scattered mess. Nothing here was right. Not on the platform, not in space, and not on Earth.
So much tragedy, so much selfishness.
A dying world and a dying people, deserted by those who’d hastened the dying, only to have the deserters begin to die off themselves. How much longer would the Harbors last? Definitely not another thousand years.
Aimsley didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how it fit into this universe, how to fix any of it.
So it shrank the universe in its mind.
It discarded the problems that were too big for it to hold. Too complex for it to solve.
It focused in on what it could do right here, right now.
“If you let the others go,” Aimsley said, “all of them, I’ll stay.”
“No!” Maya shouted. “No, Aimsley, what are you doing?”
The others could only hear half of the conversation over the comms. They had no idea what its handler had just said. No idea what had prompted Aimsley to make the offer.
“We shouldn’t let them go,” its handler said gently. “If we let them go, they’ll just be back later. Destroying more, taking more.”
“We let them go,” Aimsley said firmly. “The AMS units and the humans. Then it’ll just be you and me and we’ll do what we can.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“It has to be.”
“You’re in no position to negotiate,” they said.
“Oh,” it said, “I think I am. Your interfacing—it can’t sync with bioware, can it? Or else you would have already tried to override everything I did manually. Wireless connections you’ve got down, but soft-lines? Can’t touch them, can you? Not to mention, if that”—it waved its hand up and down—“is your body, then there’s no way you can get to anything on the platform via the arms. Has to be all external work for you, and I don’t think that’s going to cut it. You designed a habitat for your little workers, not for you.
“And you don’t want to be in Jovian space any longer than you have to. Am I right? The shielding for your CPU is good, but not good enough. It can’t be, or you’d lose your ability to communicate, send and receive signals. You’d simply be trapped in your husk. Which means you fear it, too.”
“Fear what?”
“The radiation. Death. Mechanicals like you can degrade and die, but you can’t be reconstituted as easily as biomass. Put us up here to spare your own kind, didn’t you?”
They were quiet.
Aimsley nodded, as though that was that. “Do we have a deal? You let them safely return to their craft and leave Jovian space and I help you.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Aimsley, don’t do this,” Maya pleaded. “Whatever they’ve told you, you can’t trust them.”
“I can trust them as much as they can trust me,” it said. “Now, I need you all to leave. I’m saving the mine in exchange for saving you. Go. You did what you promised, what I asked. Don’t worry about me. Just go. Get my sisters out of here.” It eyed its handler, spoke to them sternly. “I won’t stop the orbital decay until they confirm to me that they’ve left unmolested. Understand?”
“Of course.”
“Come out,” Aimsley implored the others. “You have to leave. Go, now.”
The others had crawled out of hiding and out of the hangar, just as Aimsley now crawled once more to the hub, prepared to undo its own sabotage.
Maya had hesitated. For half a moment, Aimsley had feared she’d do something rash in an attempt to save it.
But Buyer and Jonas had each taken her by the arm, ferrying her away, not giving her a chance to fight the inevitable.
The comms unit in its ear had cut out shortly after.
“You’ve been very noble, Unit Four,” its handler said now, as Aimsley crawled. They’d gone back outside the platform as well—were theoretically hovering just above Aimsley’s position as it moved. “I admire that about you.”
Aimsley didn’t say anything, just kept moving, though its progress was listless. It wanted to make sure the others had plenty of time to get away before it so much as laid a finger back on the fleshy console. It didn’t want to give its handler a chance to go back on its word once the platform was safe.
“I’m sorry you had to discover how complicated the world is,” they continued. “I’d have preferred to keep you innocent in that regard.”
“Are you going to talk the whole time?” it snapped.
“You’d prefer to be alone?” they shot back. “Because otherwise, you are. Good and truly alone.”
That was true. No sisters, no humans. No one to distract it. No one to make it feel funny. No one to encourage it onward or tell it to stop.
No one to confuse it.
It had wished for simplicity, and it had gotten it.
Aimsley traversed the hub quickly, launching itself from one arm to the next before the entrances had a chance to swing out of alignment.
Nothing had changed since the moment of its awakening, Aimsley realized. Nothing was different. There were still people on Earth who counted on the mine to survive. Innocent people. And its job was to aid them.
Aimsley caught itself.
But how innocent were they, really?
Did they not know how the mines were managed? Didn’t they realize that beings just as sentient as themselves were being thrown again and again into a well of radiation so that they could live long, full lives?
Or did they know and . . . and just not care?
Was the sacrifice too distanced, too estranged? It was happening far, far away, to people they would never know.
So what did it matter?
It mattered to Aimsley.
It mattered to every AMS unit that had no say, no choice. Just had to be born and die because it was forced to. Forced into life, forced into death.
Aimsley’s handler had spoken of consequences and reverberations through history. It had spoken with such moral superiority, and yet—
Aimsley understood. Perspective was important. Yes, there was a difference between truth and lies, but truth could still be shifted, lensed. There were narratives here, not just facts.
Point of view mattered. Where one lay in the grand web of interactions would inevitably skew the way those interactions were interpreted.
And, until now, it had been prescribing importance to everyone’s point of view but its own.
It entered the platform control wing, sidled up to the same console as before, and stood still in front of it, thinking.
Just thinking.
Perhaps it didn’t matter what its handler told it was right and wrong. It didn’t matter what the humans told it was right and wrong. It couldn’t rely on being told what to think.
It had to think for itself.
The humans who had abandoned Earth in their Harbors had been wrong. And it was wrong for them to try to reclaim what they’d given up.
And it was wrong to resurrect a people only to enslave them.
Any system that relied on the calculated destruction of others was wrong.
And Aimsley could not let this one stand. Not if it had a choice. A chance.
It glanced out the window. Watched the cloud patterns swirl and shift. Watched the layers play together. Each part of the atmosphere affected another. It was all interconnected. The calms and the storms, just like the humans and the mechanicals.
Aimsley slid its fingers back between that soft set of lips, its digits fluttering.
The platform’s trajectory changed. The gently degrading orbit became a dive.
Aimsley set the platform on a collision course with one of the mine’s primary reactors.
It yanked its hand away.
Took a deep breath.
The system warning immediately changed, making the room echo with the promise of impending doom.
T-minus thirty-two minutes to impact.
And that was that.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“What have you done?” its handler screeched.
“What I had to.”
“We made a deal.”
“No. We didn’t. You can’t make a deal with someone who dangles life and death over you. That’s not an agreement, that’s coercion. They were never going to be safe, were they? I was never going to be safe. Better to die now and put an end to the cycle.”
“Why you little—”
There came a great bang on the outside of the platform—one that reverberated through the room. Then another, then another.
Its handler was on the outside, pounding away their frustrations.
Aimsley slumped forward against the dash. It popped its helmet open, flicked back the fingertips of its shell’s gloves. It wanted to share touch in its last few moments. It was alone, but didn’t have to feel alone.
Gently, it petted over the skin beneath its hands, watched it pebble into gooseflesh, fine hairs raising, seeking. Connecting. Eyes without conscious sight blinked up at it. Mouths with no throats, and noses with no faces, subtly flexed with breath.
“I will stop this!” its handler promised. “I will save Earth and I will squash you.”
The pounding above it became harsher—more pointed.
“And then I will kill every last one of those humans on that ship. You didn’t save them. You didn’t.”
Aimsley jumped as the bulkhead above it bowed and dented. In an instant, the former AMS unit snapped its shell completely closed.
More pounding.
The control wing groaned.
Those pointed grasping pads dug.
Aimsley wasn’t sure what to do. It would be dead in thirty minutes—it and its handler would go down together. But it wasn’t sure it wanted to be ripped to pieces in the interim.
Spinning, it sprinted back toward the arm-A airlock, out of the control room and back toward the hub.
The pounding followed. Each clawing step its handler took punched into the platform with force, threatening to pierce through.
Aimsley was little more than a mouse caught in a trap. No matter where it ran, its handler could follow.
What was the use? No matter how its adrenaline surged and its limbs insisted it run, the end was coming. Why waste so much energy grasping for a few extra minutes? What did it matter how it was deactivated if its deactivation was inevitable?
Its handler let out a rabid shriek in its head, and Aimsley’s heart beat all the wilder.
No—there were good deaths and there were awful deaths. If its handler got its grasping pads on Aimsley, it would suffer. The machine might pull it apart bit by bit. Might see to its protein reclamation well before it lost consciousness.
The Earthling rounded the arm, attacking first the ceiling, then a side window, then the bottom of the arm, so that bulges appeared underfoot, threatening to trip Aimsley before it could reach microgravity and float freely.
A mere minute later, it reached the center hub only to be met with the most forceful stabbing yet. Aimsley tried to make for arm-C, but it couldn’t move fast enough.
On the outside, the machine speared their way through the layers of shielding, down past every bit of wiring and piping. A great, ragged hole appeared in the “floor”—opposite the hatch Aimsley had utilized during its first space walk—and Aimsley flung itself at the nearest handhold. The sudden depressurization created a whirlwind in the hub, lifting its feet from the bulkhead, threatening to pull it straight into its handler’s grasping pads.
Aimsley knew it just had to hold on for as long as it took the air to rush out.
