I, Starship: A Space Opera, page 4
“Sergeant Morgan, the ship you find yourself aboard…is you. The ship is you, and you are the ship. This is your new life. This is your new reality. Welcome…to the UESS Henry Morgan.”
Chapter Seven
Henry, 2117
He waited a few seconds for Pyle to say something else, but the lieutenant commander had again adopted a grandiose posture, his arms flung wide to encompass the whole ship, and he seemed fixed in it.
“Come again?” Henry asked.
“Can we plug him in already?” Stefan Dalca said.
Pyle lowered his arms. “Patience, Stefan! We need to orientate him first. Look, just lay him down on the table there.” He indicated a metal surface nearby. “Gently!”
Dalca did, with surprising care. Then he took up position at the end of the table, glowering at the far bulkhead.
For his part, Pyle turned to face Henry in his new resting place, a warm smile returning to his face. “As I inferred, Sergeant, we live in historical times. Desperate times, in fact. Such times as these call for humanity to gird its loins and muster every available resource. They call for staggering innovation, and a certain boldness in leveraging that innovation. They call for things to be done such as have never been done before.”
“Lunch is soon,” Dalca said, never taking his eyes from the bulkhead.
Pyle ignored him. “Sergeant Morgan, I have no doubt that until now, since your reawakening in the twenty-second century, you’ve encountered only government employees who lack any vision. And that’s actually a good thing. If every foot soldier had a vision of his or her own, we’d be in trouble, since most visions are misguided, and tainted by human shortcomings. That’s why we have policies, and foot soldiers only to know to follow those policies, remaining ever within the strict parameters defined by them. Even when a little creative thinking would bear much fruit! But no matter. Visionaries are few, and policies are necessary, as I said. It might be that in spite of such policies, you have picked up on certain facts about our situation. Such as, for example, the fact that there appears to be an unknown, and very likely alien presence making its home in our very asteroid belt. Did anyone tell you that?”
“Yes, sir. Someone did mention something along those lines.”
Pyle was nodding gravely. “It’s true, Sergeant. But if only that were the sole challenge facing us in these unprecedented times. If we only had this intruder to deal with, that would be one thing. Certainly, even by itself, addressing such a threat would require ingenuity and daring. But it’s not so far outside our reach. The Kuiper Belt is already replete with our probes and mining drones, and our orbital industrial capabilities are such that constructing a military craft, staffing it, and sending it out to answer the threat is comfortably within our grasp—though still not an inconsiderable undertaking.”
It took a second for Henry to parse the double negative, but he got there. “Right,” he agreed.
“Gravely, however, that is not the only task that befalls us. A darkness is falling across the stars, Sergeant Morgan, which has been observed spreading from system to system. It was first detected in secret by your government toward the beginning of last century, in the wake of significant improvements to exoplanet detection methods. With our enhanced ability to detect ‘wobbles’ caused by a planet orbiting its sun, or dips in starlight caused by a planet transiting in front of the star, we also gained the ability to detect when those wobbles and dips cease to occur as they should.
“We first began to be suspicious in 2017, when changes in the brightness of the star Luyten 789-6, previously thought to be caused by solar flares, abruptly stopped. A new theory was proposed, in a classified report to the president of the time: perhaps the previously observed brightness changes could instead be explained by the destruction and reconstruction of space-based structures, signifying a war that seemed to abruptly stop that year—presumably because the system’s inhabitants were wiped out.
“Something equally suspicious happened in 2021, when Lacaille 9352’s newly discovered exoplanet apparently ceased to be. The news was kept from the public, to avoid making an already scared people fall into outright panic. You lived during that time, Sergeant, and so you’ll recall that 2021 was an interesting enough year as it was, without alarming the public about disappearing planets.”
“For sure,” Henry put in. “2021 did not make my top-ten list of favorite years.”
“I imagine not. But what we face now will likely make it look like a historical footnote. Fifty years after whatever happened to Lac 9352’s exoplanet, astronomers observed a phenomenon begin to play out around Rigil Kentaurus which seemed to mirror whatever happened to Luyten 789-6. That phenomenon is ongoing, though with apparent cessations that last anywhere from less than a year to nearly a decade. Rigil Kent forms a binary pair with a star called Toliman, which seems next in line to experience a similar…phenomenon. But frankly, Sergeant, our country’s military leadership has seen enough. The time has come for humanity to move from passive observation to truly proactive measures. In short order, you will be sent to the asteroid belt to answer whatever alien threat has arrived in our solar system…but the mission you will undertake afterward is one that we’ve been preparing for for over five years.”
“So why was I just woken up? Or resurrected, or whatever?”
Pyle’s mouth twitched, but when he spoke again, his voice came out just as calm and mellifluous as before. “Your discovery was essentially a fluke, Sergeant, and a rather fortunate one, since we only just began to contend with this mission’s need for someone exactly like you. But I’ll get into that a little later. Wouldn’t you like to know what we’ve concluded about what might be happening in our neighboring stars?”
“Oh. Yeah, sure. That’d be great.”
“Very well.”
Pyle began pacing the room, each step seeming deliberate and measured as he made sweeping gestures to punctuate his points. For his part, Dalca continued staring at the bulkhead, looking like he was completely done with the conversation, and had been since its beginning.
“What our analysts have come to believe is that what we’ve been watching occur from the alleged safety of our earthly cradle is no less than a series of successive genocides.” He paused, probably to let that seep in. “Based on the activity we’ve detected over the last century, around Luyten 789-6, around Lac 9352, and now around Rigil Kent, we’ve been forced to conclude that space is far more populated than we ever dreamed of. Why that fact has been concealed from us until now is impossible to say, but it seems inescapable that some malevolent force has been systematically annihilating populations, in system after system after system—and that force’s murderous trajectory makes our own Earth a highly probably target, and very soon. It may not come to pass for many decades yet, but the military analysts of multiple allied countries now consider it a near-certainty that the very future of our species is bound to come under threat. To do nothing about that would be downright criminal.”
“I’d agree,” Henry said, mostly to keep the conversation flowing.
“I knew you would, Sergeant. I knew you would. Our analysts believe the decades-long war around Rigil Kent is at last drawing to a close, and that Toliman will be the next target. And so, it is to there that we must go. However. As I’m sure you can appreciate, a voyage to Toliman is not easily accomplished. One cannot simply walk to a star that’s 4.367 light years away. Even the cutting edge of propulsion technology—the fission drive, perfected during the 2090s—offers a trip no shorter than eighty years. Left to their own devices during such a long time, the original crew of such a mission would be old and frail at its culmination. Certainly, we could take the highly unorthodox step of requesting that they reproduce with each other en route, so that their children could complete their mission, but that introduces unacceptable complications.”
“I could see that, for sure,” Henry said. “Kids these days only want to be YouTube stars.”
“Er…yes….” Pyle stopped pacing, blinked, then resumed his route back and forth across the chamber. “I do believe you grasp my basic point, which is that, while the selection board has thoroughly screened the crew that will embark on this mission, they can have no expectation of screening their descendants. Priorities can change over the span of decades, even among that original crew. Mission drift would likely become a significant problem. We might even end up with a crew more excited about the prospect of meeting ET, or vacationing on an alien world, than they are about saving humanity from the threat that appears to be rampaging across the stars.”
“What’s the solution, then?”
“I’m glad you asked. The solution, my dear Sergeant, is to place the crew into what is effectively a long hibernation, which will last for the duration of the voyage. That will ensure they retain their vigor until they reach their destination, as well as the mission-oriented mindset they’ll need to complete the task given them. But I’m sure you’re already beginning to see the problems with this approach.”
“The ship would be flying blind.”
“We find nautical analogies to be more useful in space, in point of fact, Sergeant. Space is much more like water than air, wouldn’t you say? Which is actually good news for a Marine.”
“So, sailing blind.”
“Exactly right. And not only would we be sailing blind, but things tend to break down over the course of decades. Things stop working. And new challenges arise. We need a way of detecting threats as they come up, but identifying threats and deciding whether they warrant the fairly involved step of waking crew—not to mention the decision of which crewmembers should be woken. All of that would require an advanced AI. But an AI that advanced would also be capable of going off the rails in a spectacularly disastrous way—we know because we’ve seen it happen on Earth, more than once. And this, my dear Sergeant, is where you come in.”
Henry considered all that for a few seconds. “But aren’t I also just a—”
“Never say it!” Pyle held up his index finger, stepping swiftly across the room to place his hands gently along both sides of Henry’s casing. “You are no mere AI, Sergeant, and I won’t hear talk of it in my lab.”
Dalca took his eyes off the bulkhead to study Pyle with brows lowered skeptically.
“But I am, though,” Henry said.
“You are not!” Pyle roared, hands flying off of Henry’s casing, coming to rest on both sides of the man’s head. “Sergeant Henry Morgan, you are a person. You just happen to be a person who has been given a new shell to reside in. One not so different from the fleshy shells Dalca and I currently inhabit.”
“Takes one to know one,” Dalca said.
Pyle shot him a bemused glance, then lowered his hands once more to rest on Henry’s casing. “Sergeant, you are a person, and one with capabilities which no human has ever possessed in all of history. Because of your background, your history, and your unique circumstances, only you can enable this most vital of historic missions. Without you, we can have no reasonable expectation of saving humanity. And if you cooperate with this most momentous of tasks, then I would like to reintroduce myself. I am Lieutenant Commander Ethan Pyle, and I will be the AI Engineer aboard this ship. And while I stand by my statement that you are no AI, it is my specialty that is most suited to assisting you in your work. But since you are not a tool, but a person, I will never call you a tool. Instead, it is my wish that we become friends. Would you call me Ethan?”
“Yes,” Henry said, feeling a little dazed by it all. “Of course.”
“And would you permit me to call you Henry?”
“Sure, that’s fine.”
Pyle patted Henry’s casing with both his hands, simultaneously. “Then it’s official, Henry. Today, I believe we have forged a friendship which will echo through the halls of history for many millennia to come.”
Chapter Eight
Henry, 2117
“That last sentence sounded like you’re finished,” Dalca said. “But I should know better than to assume that.”
Pyle looked at the ship’s engineer with wide eyes. “Dalca, did you not just hear me say that we stand on the precipice of an undertaking of historic import?”
“Yes, and I have a list of checks to complete that’s as long as your ego.”
“Then you might have said that!” The AI engineer closed his eyes, and shook his head sorrowfully. “That’s the problem with you, Stefan. You speak when you shouldn’t, and you keep quiet when you should speak.”
“Are you ready for me to plug this thing in or not?” Dalca rapped on Henry’s casing.
“That thing,” Pyle hissed, his voice shaking, his eyes filled with rage, “contains a man named Sergeant Henry Morgan on whom your very life depends.”
“Yes. And I’m the queen of France.”
For a long moment, Henry was sure it would come to blows between the two engineers. But the tension gradually seeped out of the air, and at last Pyle closed his eyes again, seeming to draw a deep breath. “I am ready for you to connect Henry to the ship’s computer systems, Stefan.”
“Fine.” Shooing Pyle out of the way, Dalca stood where he’d been and grasped Henry by both handles, lifting him and then following Pyle past a partition, behind which a passage led to a chamber about three times larger than the first. It was much dimmer, too, and filled with black obelisks that glowed blue, casting the room in an ethereal light. Henry figured the towers were computer servers.
Pyle led them to an alcove at the very back, which he accessed through a sturdy-looking transparent door. The alcove perfectly matched Henry’s dimensions, so that if someone slid him into it—which he fully expected Dalca was about to—it would be a snug fit.
Holding the door open, Pyle gestured toward the hollow with his palm up, as if inviting Dalca to get inside. Instead, the engineer set Henry down on the deck and began pulling out thick cables and encased wires from the back, all of which unwound from hidden spools with a whining sound.
Dalca spent the next couple of minutes comparing wires with each other, with bunches of them in either hand, and plugging them, one by one, into Henry’s backside.
At one point, he stopped to stare at a cable’s male end for several minutes as he rubbed a hand along the back of his head.
“You do know what you’re doing,” Pyle said after a while, sounding genuinely worried. “Don’t you, Stefan?”
Dalca only grunted, and less than a minute later he shrugged, plugging the cable into some port. Henry couldn’t actually see his ports, and so he had to trust that the engineer did, in fact, know what he was doing.
At last, with multiple connections made, Dalca picked Henry up and slid him into the cube-shaped slot built into the bulkhead.
“It’s ready,” he said. With that, he stomped out of Pyle’s lab without another word.
Pyle leaned a hand against the bulkhead near Henry’s alcove, wearing a pained expression. “Henry, I have to apologize for how you were treated just now.”
“Eh, I’m getting used to it.”
“You shouldn’t have to get used to it. But the unfortunate reality is, someone like that—” He shoved his free hand through the air, toward where Dalca had disappeared around the partition. “—lacks the understanding to know what he’s dealing with. But I suppose we can’t hold it against him. All he understands are nuts and bolts and wires and CO2 scrubbers and—and what have you. He knows only dead things. Inert things. He can’t possibly grasp the fact that a Reconstituted Mind is completely different from a run-of-the-mill AI. Those AIs might as well be aliens, and dumb aliens, not to mention untrustworthy. But with RMs, we’ve taken the intricate machinery of the human brain and lovingly restored it to function via highly advanced circuitry and quantum phenomena. You exist atop a neural network in the truest sense of it—much truer than how the AI experts of your day would have used that term. And the fact you’re still human is why we can trust you with a mission like this. One which we could never hand over to a mere AI.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so. And you must believe it too. Not only because, as I’ve established, it is the number one rule of this lab….” He held up an admonishing finger, though a smile gave the gesture the quality of a joke. “Which you technically live in now, permanently. But also because it’s true. And this entire mission is built on that truth.”
“All right.”
“Commander Dalca has no idea what great things you will accomplish, Henry. But he will learn. And with that, I have only one question for you. Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“For…this!” Pyle closed the transparent door, flipped open a panel nested beside it, and tapped in a sequence of commands.
Henry’s mind exploded.
Chapter Nine
Henry, 2117
He was lost in a void—but one of such fullness.
His mind struggled to grasp what was happening, and in its struggle, his reality went through several permutations.
He floated, disembodied, in the depths of the ocean, or maybe in microgravity. It was a purple-tinged nothing-space, occupied only by him, and the glowing streams of data that zipped past, causing him to spin wildly, his perspective whipping around until he was sure he must be ill, except that he had no stomach from which to vomit.
Then he was back in the lab with Pyle. But when he tried to speak, his alcove melted, and so did the AI engineer’s face, and the bulkheads beyond him. They fell away to reveal the curved inner surface of a chicken egg, one which closed in tight around him. A hand flickered, and when he willed it to move, it did move. It was…his hand? He had a hand? He used its fingers to paw weakly at the concave white surface, and found it incredibly smooth.
Then he was watching Dalca from above, stomping along a narrow access corridor, holding a wrench and muttering to himself.
Then he was staring once more into a void. But this wasn’t just any void. It was the void. The void of space, dotted with stars, pinpricks of light that cast forth their radiance in unwavering certitude, no longer made to twinkle for him by the mediation of a planet’s atmosphere.
