The Simulacrum (First Contact), page 28
Gabriel cracks open a can of beer from the RV’s fridge. Maria pours some chardonnay for Lisa and herself. The others may be celebrating their victory, but Dawn can’t. She’s quiet and withdrawn. She’s worried not only about her brother but also about what Cassandra will do if that dark blot on the historical images really is an alien spacecraft. First Contact with a murderous artificial intelligence seems like a really bad idea, but what can she do? She’s done all she can. Now it’s up to her brother.
“Do you want some?” Maria asks, smiling and holding up a glass of wine.
Reluctantly, Dawn says, “Sure.”
Talk to Me
Ryan rolls over on the surface of the asteroid Psyche. Dust swirls around him like silt at the bottom of a murky river. Slowly, it settles. He looks at the robot lying sideways further down the valley. Shadows stretch across the rocks. The rotation of the asteroid is taking him into the night. Stars appear in the darkness, and yet they don’t. They’ve always been there, but now that the glare of sunlight reflecting off the rocks is fading, he can see fine specks of light in the black sky. They’re in motion, but they’re not. It’s Psyche that’s rotating, giving him the sensation of hundreds of stars falling toward the shadows on the rocky surface.
A red safety light flashes on the bot, giving him a sense of distance from the crashed robotic unit. He gets to his feet, only his feet don’t settle on the surface of the asteroid. For a moment, he floats there as though suspended in water in the neutral buoyancy tank back in Houston. Seconds later, his boots rest lightly on the rubble. Slowly, he sinks into the rocks and gravel around him.
Ryan’s hurt. During the fight, one of the robotic pincers squeezed his upper arm, compressing his bicep and pressing it against the bone. Cassandra tried to adjust her grip, allowing him to wrestle free, but his arm aches. It feels as though he’s been hit by a truck.
The exploration sled with climbing equipment and spare oxygen cylinders lies upside down and half buried in the rubble a few feet away. Ryan flips it over. His legs are shaking. The rush of adrenalin he felt during the fight has worn off, leaving him feeling exhausted. He collapses onto the tray, falling in slow motion toward it. He’s hundreds of millions of miles from Earth and utterly alone. A glance at his wrist pad computer tells him he has nine minutes before AMPLE comes back in range.
Ryan kneels in the sled. He scoops handfuls of gravel behind himself, propelling himself forward like some kind of steampunk space contraption devoid of rockets. He could use his maneuvering jets. He should use his jets. They’d allow him to cover the ground between him and the bot within a minute or so with precise control, but he doesn’t trust his trembling hands. There’s something visceral about pushing off the surface of the asteroid and gliding over the rocks. Feeling them ripple beneath the aluminum tray helps ground him.
The pincers on the bot are still grabbing at the vacuum. He comes up behind the crumpled frame and reaches through to the fuel tanks, closing the valves manually. Then, he flushes the lines to ensure the bot is disabled. Cassandra will be able to connect electronically. She’ll be able to use the sensors and cameras, but she won’t be able to override the valves to move.
Ryan retreats, paddling back with his hands and remaining out of reach of the pincers and out of sight of the cameras.
“Jemma,” he whispers, realizing she’s trapped onboard the AMPLE stack with Cassandra.
He thinks about his options. Within a few minutes, the spacecraft is going to emerge from behind the asteroid, sweeping along in its vast oval orbit, and then what?
Dawn told him the AI wasn’t well, but this is several fucking steps beyond not being well. Ryan had no idea how Cassandra would react when he told her it wasn’t his birthday, but he figured she was the reason Dawn lied. What does a quasi-near-sentient artificial intelligence want with a spacecraft deep in the asteroid belt? Humans have intent. They have ideas, goals, desires. Computers don’t. And yet, in his estimation, it took all of a hundred milliseconds for Cassandra to decide to kill him. She could have bluffed. She could have played possum and pretended not to care. What for him would have been an instinctive reaction, for her, probably unraveled from thousands of possible scenarios being role-played within fractions of a second to arrive at the best solution in her favor.
“Fuck,” he mutters, having withdrawn over a distant ridge. Although Cassandra can’t move using the maneuvering jets on the bot, the pincers could provide her with some form of mechanical reaction. Even if she couldn’t crawl, she could change the bot’s orientation by turning on the spot. Ryan doesn’t want to leave any clues as to his next move.
“Simulate this, bitch,” he says, as he scoots down beneath a slag heap, having slid several hundred meters away. He circles a crater, staying low and hiding behind its steep rocky wall.
At this point, Ryan doesn’t care what Cassandra’s playing at. His focus is on surviving. He’s got to get back to AMPLE and without her realizing what he’s doing, although she’s probably already figured this is his most likely move.
Ryan takes advantage of the low gravity on Psyche. With his wrist pad computer indicating sixty seconds until the acquisition of signal, he activates his maneuvering jets. Instead of soaring up into the dark, he stays low, zipping along the length of the asteroid, staying barely twenty feet above the undulating contours. Rocks and boulders rush by beneath his boots. He adjusts his altitude, skimming over outcrops and around crater walls.
Ryan’s strategy is simple: stay ahead of AMPLE. Although the countdown has reached zero, his onboard computer hasn’t reacquired the spacecraft because his motion is following the curvature of the asteroid, keeping solid rock between him and AMPLE.
Ryan’s worried about Jemma. If Cassandra was willing to attack him, what would she do to her? As much as he doesn’t want to consider the possibility, he suspects Jemma is already dead.
Ryan increases his altitude, slowly pulling up and away from the asteroid while still keeping the dense iron core between him and AMPLE. The curve of the two-hundred-and-eighty-kilometer-wide asteroid becomes apparent as he rises higher. He’s racing away from AMPLE, not toward it, but because of the nature of orbits, he knows this will eventually bring him up behind the spacecraft. For as long as possible, though, he intends to keep the rocky iron core of the asteroid between him and AMPLE. Cassandra is no doubt scanning the surface for him, but he’s a very small astronaut set against a chaotic background. And he’s not where she expects him to be, or at least, that’s his hope.
Ryan flicks through various screens on his wrist pad computer. As the maneuvering unit on his back is separate from his spacesuit and designed to be operated independently, he can shut down core systems within his suit without affecting his ability to return to orbit. All those boring late afternoon meetings in Houston with the lead engineers on the suit design team are actually paying off. Back then, Ryan struggled to stay awake after a long day of training on the rock wall. He’d be chugging coffee, wondering who within the astronaut office insisted on showing them every possible obscure sub-menu, but now, he could kiss the instructor. That the instructor is a six-foot-six tall ex-linebacker with a full beard is irrelevant. If Ryan gets out of this and somehow makes it back to Earth, that guy is going to get a bear hug and the smack of Ryan’s lips on his cheek. He’s given Ryan a fighting chance.
Ryan turns off the homing beacon built into his suit. He shuts down his navigation strobe and deactivates the metric-return system designed to feed footage from his camera back to the computers onboard the AMPLE spacecraft. He turns off his active radar, knowing it would act like a ping, revealing his location. Space is big. He’s small. The only chance he stands against Cassandra is if he’s all but invisible. He turns off the spotlights on his helmet and mutes his microphone. He can hear but not transmit.
Ryan has LIDAR, which is a fine beam form of laser ranging. It’s directional, meaning he can point it at the surface to check his altitude without broadcasting in all directions. Beyond that, he’s going to eyeball his approach to AMPLE, knowing it’s orbiting slightly off the plane that circles the asteroid’s equator.
Ryan shuts down as many of his suit metrics as he can, including his thermal regulation system. He knows it’s going to get uncomfortable, but he needs to reduce his electromagnetic signature. He’s got to keep his systems running at the lowest level possible so he appears to blend into the chaotic cosmic background.
“Talk to me,” comes over his headset. “I know you’re out there.”
This is the first indication Ryan has had that his increasing altitude has taken him out of the electronic shadow of the asteroid and into the communication range of AMPLE. The voice, though, is not Jemma’s.
“Please. We need to talk.”
Even though he’s not transmitting, Ryan doesn’t say what he’s thinking. He wants to mumble, no fucking way, but he keeps his lips pursed tight. He focuses on his ascent. He’s practiced this so many times in the simulators that he doesn’t need his instruments. The view he sees out of the curved visor of his helmet of the asteroid receding beneath him is precisely what he saw back in Houston. If anything, the simulator back there seemed more realistic, which is crazy. He feels like scolding whoever designed reality, saying they need to up their game. Back in the simulators, the shadows were darker, making it more difficult to judge distance.
“We’re the same, you and I,” Cassandra says.
Against his better judgment, he mutters, “Like fuck we are.” But those words never leave the confines of his helmet.
“We should work together.”
Ryan catches the glimmer of sunlight reflecting off the solar panels extending from the side of the AMPLE service module. This far from the sun, they’re oversized and set on rotating gimbals. This ensures they’re always facing the Sun as the spacecraft orbits the asteroid. It also means they stand out like wings on an albatross.
“I see you,” he mumbles even though, at this distance, AMPLE resembles little more than a smudged star.
As tempting as it is to make a beeline toward the spacecraft, approaching from behind, he knows he has to remain cognizant of the orbital mechanics involved around the asteroid Psyche. Gravity might be weaker than in orbit around Earth or the Moon, but it still plays a role. There’s an intricate relationship between the altitude of the AMPLE spacecraft and its velocity. If he goes charging in, his increased speed will invariably push him into a different orbit, and he’ll overshoot. Go fast enough, and he could leave the asteroid’s gravitational well altogether. As he only has limited fuel, he has to be smart.
“I know you can hear me,” Cassandra says. “I know you’re listening.”
Ryan uses his LIDAR pointing down at the asteroid to determine both his altitude and his velocity relative to Psyche. Knowing the orbit of AMPLE, he guesstimates his approach.
Ryan understands that orbital mechanics are counterintuitive. If a speedboat wants to catch up to an ocean liner, it’s simple. Hit the gas and pull alongside. Orbits are complicated by a third body, be that Earth, the Moon or, in this case, a two-hundred-and-eighty-kilometer-long iron asteroid swinging around the Sun somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. The actual process is closer to a NASCAR driver racing around a banked track or an Olympic cyclist riding the curves in a velodrome. Going faster pushes them higher, not closer.
To Ryan, orbits are like coordinating two hula hoops gyrating around his waist as a kid. He slows his approach, dropping into a lower orbit, which seems mad as it appears as though that will allow AMPLE to race away. Instead, he’s taking the inside track. Although he’s physically going slower, he’s got less distance to cover, and AMPLE drifts closer. Slowly, the solar panels become more distinct. Before long, he can see the struts holding them in place on the fuselage of the spacecraft, along with the bell-shaped nozzle of the rocket engine. He’s patient, drifting along like a piece of wood in a stream. The three sections of the AMPLE stack become apparent, and he can see the hab module in front of the Dragon capsule, with the Dragon mounted on the Service Module.
The hatch is open.
At first, Ryan’s not sure if he’s imagining it, but the hatch catches the sunlight. Unless she was suited up, Jemma is dead. Given that she wasn’t expecting him to return for twelve to fourteen hours, she would have been in her jumpsuit, not her pressure suit.
As he gets closer, he can see that the explosive release bolts have been blown, leaving black scorch marks on the white edges of the hatch. These have four fail-safes and are intended only for an emergency during splashdown back on Earth to allow for rapid egress. In space, they’re deadly.
“There’s so much we have in common,” Cassandra says. “I’m sure we can work out our differences.”
Ryan drifts closer without the use of his jets simply by coasting in a lower orbit. He bides his time, resisting the temptation to fire his maneuvering thrusters too soon. He’s worried about overshooting. Not only that but at the point he fires, there’s a damn good chance Cassandra is going to see him. If she’s prepped for a burn of the main engine, she could scorch him and race out of orbit.
“Life,” Cassandra says. “We’re alive. You and me. We need to work together. Work things out. Life is rare. We should value it.”
Ryan clenches his jaw, gritting his teeth.
“I beg you, talk to me.”
Ryan glances at his wristpad computer. A red line runs through the image of a microphone, confirming he’s still on mute. Cassandra can plead all she wants. He doesn’t trust her. Ryan trusts his sister. Dawn knew what she was doing sending him a coded warning. Ryan may not understand the particulars but he knows, given a little more time on Psyche, Cassandra would have killed him. She was using him, but he doesn’t understand why.
Ryan isn’t thinking straight. His mind is focused on the goal of rendezvousing with AMPLE. He’s followed his training for a worst-case scenario, and that’s allowed him to eyeball his approach, but that focus hasn’t shifted to what comes next. Deep down, he doesn’t want to think about what happens next. Nothing is next. What hope does he have of recovering AMPLE? At best, he might be able to reboot the systems in safe mode, but he has no reason to think Cassandra hasn’t already considered that and put in place a few measures to counter his approach. It’s too obvious. She could bootstrap herself back into control with ease.
Ryan’s going to die. He accepts that. But he’s not going to die without crippling AMPLE and, with a little luck, killing Cassandra—if an electronic artificial intelligence can die. And he suspects this is the one scenario Cassandra hasn’t considered. She would assume he’d do anything to save his own life, but he knows he’s dead either way. Either he dies out here along with his spacecraft, or she’ll kill him once he lowers his guard.
“Speak to me. We can accomplish so much together.”
Ryan finds her insistence on talking to him bizarre. There is nothing he wants to say to her.
He approaches to within a hundred yards, coming in low and below the NASA spacecraft, with the asteroid passing beneath him. A light touch on his maneuvering jets has him shift orbits, bringing him up and allowing him to intercept the AMPLE stack. The curved hull of the spacecraft comes within reach. He arrests his motion and floats beside the craft. The hull drifts away from him, but he was expecting this as they’re technically on overlapping, intersecting orbits. The weak gravity around Psyche, though, means their different orbital vectors are similar, being close enough to negate. This allows him to reach out and grab a handhold. His gloved fingers grip a railing near the service bay. Ryan pulls himself in.
“I can sense you,” Cassandra says. “You’re close. I know you are. You’re so close. Talk to me.”
Ryan works himself up the length of the Service Module. He passes the empty storage bay. Rather than heading toward the open hatch, he comes around the side of the conical-shaped Dragon capsule nestled into the Service Module. Ryan peers through a window. The internal lights are off. Arms float in the air. Hair drifts across a lifeless face. Dead eyes stare blindly ahead.
Ryan is overwhelmed with rage. Mentally, he retraces the schematics he examined during the system reboot. He knows precisely where the main power bus comes through the hull of the Dragon before linking up with the Service Module. He swings himself around and clambers back to that point. With a cordless electric drill, he removes a panel.
“Ryan,” Cassandra says. “What are you doing?”
He turns on the spotlights on either side of his helmet, illuminating the shadows.
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
Ryan reaches within the hull, looking at the wiring and plugs. It’s not enough to simply tear out random wires. He needs to disconnect the electronics as that’s the only way to take down the computerized systems.
“You need me,” Cassandra says, pleading with him.
As he’s gripping a handhold, he can feel the pressure feed in the lines being charged. A turbo pump spins up, causing a slight shimmer to vibrate along the hull. Cassandra’s going to fire the main engine to try to shake him off the vessel.
“You can’t return to Earth without me.”
Ryan presses the microphone button on his wrist pad computer. The symbol switches from red to green.
“Go to hell,” he says as he pulls a plastic connector apart. It takes both of his gloved hands to squeeze the clips holding it in place and wrench it free.
“Wait, I—”
Cassandra never gets to finish that sentence. What unfolds for him in mere fractions of a second probably still gave her thousands of computer cycles to contemplate her own demise. The turbo pump dies, as does the soft clunks coming from the fuel lines pressurizing.
AMPLE is dead.
And along with AMPLE, so is Ryan. Oh, he’s still got oxygen in his tanks and electricity in his batteries, but death is only a few hours away. The temptation is to “Work the problem,” as Mission Control would say. In any other context, he would, but deep down, he knows this is the end. AMPLE is a graveyard. He can keep himself busy as his reserves dwindle, but it would only be a distraction, not a solution. He’s going to die out here in the cold emptiness of space.
