Exposed themselves to us but then said nothing. They just hung there, two miles up and motionless. Like some kind of blockade. Not against us, but to keep a third party away from making landfall or making contact. It was very strange. One day the sky is clear, then the next an armada of massive ships turn up, of all sorts of different designs and such. Just hanging out, they disrupt our satellites and telecommunications, the internet and casually gun down a countless number of other ships trying to come down here to us. Now we have know idea if either party had hostile intentions, or were being benevolent toward us. We intercepted enormous quantities of encrypted chatter and messages, but those will take decades to break. The languages were like nothing we’ve ever dreamed of. They stuck around, up there for fifty one months and then fled as quickly as they came. All we now know is that we are not alone in the universe, but that we are essentially powerless against them. In their wake they left the atmosphere cleaner, and the area around the earth free of debris and all that space junk. Several million new stars had become visible to us, just with the naked eye. But beyond those astounding revelations, we have yet learned nothing new. Life goes on.”
The harsh crunch of gravel on sand underfoot reverberates through my jumpsuit…
Inside my helmet my breath comes in fast and ragged. I am sweating profusely under the brilliant shine of the triad of suns high overhead. We all struggle to keep our heart rates down, and our blood oxygen levels nominal. This scorching hot planet hangs with a red tinged sky. This horrid environment has little cloud cover, and is rocky, sand covered and almost entirely barren. The few scattered pieces of scrub brush are either a deep bruised purple or a sickly mustard infused brown. Through our helmets we can’t tell you what they smell like, but according to instrumentation we know they give of carbon monoxide and a mixture of cyanide and ammonia also. The team of scouts are being buffeted by a gale force wind. The rust coloured dust flies up hot as embers burning us through our environmental protection suits, clattering off our helmets and masks like white hot metal shavings. If we stand still for more than a couple of heart beats the soles of our boots begin to melt. The three suns range from a deep angry red to a near purple of absolute cosmic violence. In the distance of the horizon a herd of wild wandels can be seen racing hither and yonder. The tell tale sign of their presence are the mansteroud dust clouds that they kick up as they run. The uv blasted fines hang in the air, listing miles up into the stratosphere. The native beasts have to run everywhere in order to find food and to survive the intense heat once they venture out of their deep cave warrens. After our landing party had encountered them initially we determined them to not be a threat to us. The four legged over sized dog-bears had long thick tubular ‘hairs’ that they use to dissipate heat and keep cool. Tastiest beasts I’ve ever had the pleasure of finding on a back water planet. Not that we needed it, but the deep underwater aquifer that their warrens attach too allows the wandels to retain gallons of fresh water in a bladder under their bellies. Located in the only spot they can shade them from the over bearing sun light and oppressive heat. But we aren’t here to eat wandels, we’re here to find a rogue AI that has attempted to go off grid with her new found best friend. A crippled Pengar with only five limbs instead of six. Tiny miscreant of a thing. But a more brilliant ship wright and mechanic you will never encounter. Seems the Pengar named Errabor has developed a close relationship with our rogue AI Katayna, and we’ve been employed to locate them for the Company black ops sub contractor, one Mr. Boreck Kartcher. We’ve been paid handsomely, and I do not believe it was out of charity, but because he expects a good many of my fire team to die in the process. With great risk comes great financial reward.
Our first major clue to their whereabouts came from one of the tight beam communications repeaters that get sent off across the galaxy to try to maintain contact between every known quadrant of intelligent space. A random black box transponder ping from a supposedly decommissioned Falcon Heavy-Class star hopper went straight to the top of my in box marked most urgent. The second clue was the destroyed anti poaching gun platform that orbits this world being nearly obliterated by a head on collision with something super colossal. Put those together and we have a pretty good lead on our rogue elements. Scanning for life forms doesn’t really help us out, due to the protected wandels, sorry conservationists we ate two of them. Didn’t read the sign on the way down. Our bad. Plus the spec’s we got on Katayna says she isn’t classically defined as ‘alive’ , so much as sentient, and homicidal towards humanity. Hence the exorbitant pay we recieved for tracking her down and possibly bringing her back to Mr Kartcher.
PART THREE The Company: Sisters in Arms
“What is it exactly, that you do here Mr. Kartcher?”…
Asks the Company lawyer, a Mrs. Kinsey, from across the cramped drab meeting room, buried deep inside a bunker on a remote outpost. The level of security and secrecy undertaken to get her there for this particular interview was no small feat. She had had to withstand many months of rigorous and down right invasive scrutiny to take the role of lead investigator on this case for the Company. The momentous amount of strain and shear magnitude of pressure she was under to set things right for the Company was weighing down on her tremendously. “Do you want the long form, or a short and more concise answer to that question Mrs. Kinsey?” “What’s the difference?” “Well I’d have to say a certain degree of nuance, and an awful lot of legalese and technical jargon. How does that sound to you Mrs. Kinsey.” “Ok. Why don’t we start this deposition with the short answer and I will query you after the fact for longer, or more precise interpretations of what you are telling me here now. I must remind you that lying or omitting facts and then “filling” in those gaps later in your written answers could leave you open to significant legal liabilities. Am I understood Mr. Boreck Kartcher?” “Yes ma’am, abundantly so.” Reaching across the white formica table, the Company lawyer switches on her recorder, and sets the ticker tape to output. She has to keep her mind on the information she is about to interpret and not on writing facts down. Since the details of the case are so volatile there can be no visual recording kept of this interaction. It was requested from above that this procedure be done in a total media black out, gag orders abound. These cases are so far beyond classified that absolutely no hint of what goes on at this far flung outpost can ever see the light of day. Tension has taken up residence in Kinsey’s shoulders, neck and head. The trek out here was eighteen months long, and the majority of that was in utter desolate radio silence. Leaning back in her chair, the only two on the outpost, Kinsey points for Boreck to begin. Adjusting the tight form fitting collar on his maroon jumpsuit, exhaling slightly he begins. “Ok, so to be totally honest with you, my job is to provide the Company with a very delicate service. Yes, yes I know… very vague. You see, they have spent the last several centuries attempting to create, and integrate a viable form of AI in their newest range of Falcon Heavy-Class star hoppers. Some, if not all, of those seven vessels have gone rogue. The first one went dark unexpectedly, and then started to turn up in rather strange places. Others turned on their crew complement and eradicated all forms of human oversight stationed aboard them. Others still, managed to decimate the entire rest of the ships in the fleets they accompanied. So that’s where I step in. Or more formally, that’s where I am contracted to perform my services, such as they are.” Leaning back into his chair, he reaches across the stark white table top to grab a dull brown and gold bulb of black coffee. After a brief sip off of the attached straw he fixes the lawyer with his gaze. “Now, where was I? Yes. So, these ultra powerful, and highly temperamental vessels go schizophrenic and can no longer be held under the Company rule. Some how each and every one of these seven colossal star ships has managed to jump over or eradicate any boundaries embedded in their programming, and go off on their merry way. That’s where I come in.” With rising agitation, Kinsey starts to feel as though she is getting the run around. She does not intend to sit there tidily, as her quarry finds new and interesting ways to say the same thing for hours on end. Getting angry, as the over head lights start to swim and blur in her peripheral vision she begins to shout. “Listen here Boreck, I’ve come an awfully long way, and I wield the word of God here, so quit with the recaps and tell me what the fuck is going on! I will remind you that I have it well within my authority to glass this installation and have you jettisoned into hard vacuum. So… again Mr. Kartcher, what the fuck is it that you do here?” Her drab orange jumpsuit is pulled tight across her chest, as she gesticulates wildly from her chair, slamming both hands down on the white formica table to accentuate her demands. Across the table the small older man smiles with the most subtle of an upturned lip. Mrs Kinsey has started to develop a bead of sweat on her upper lip. Her eyes are starting to look just a little wild. As she settles down Boreck can see she is gently fussing with her jumpsuits collar. “I decommission star ships. Well, that is to say, I track down errant vessels and kill the AI within. I’ve got back doors, trap doors, key codes, fobs, and all sorts of nasty tricks to help me do it. In one instance I merely had to reach my hands deep down inside a box of grey artificial brain matter and scoop a bunch out to render Margot’s Fever inoperable. That was a distinct delight, if I do say so myself. Oh what? Why the look on your face? You thought the ‘official’ story about an insane captain was true? Ha. How do you think he was able to make vanish seventeen hundred members of his crew in less than a tenth of a second, huh? The For E’s engine prototype was well ahead of it’s time, I’ll tell you that much. Can’t run an interdimensional engine without an AI. That’s for fucking certain. No, the Company said the captain and crew had simply miscalculated, killing the vast majority of his crew with the jump, then dumped the ship off here for me to decommission and to render the AI’S services complete. You learn a lot when you are left alone to kill these rogue beasties my darling. So no need to raise your voice with me. I am well aware of my position within the Company.” Fires back the modestly dressed demolition man seated across from her, in a now slightly more claustrophobic feeling sealed room buried in a nameless bunker in some unknown quadrant of the universe. The dull glare of the lights have begun to dance in Mrs Kinsey’s eyes. “Riddle me this Mrs. Kinsey, how many life forms, or life readings did you encounter when you came within scanning distance of this outpost? Huh. How many? One? Ten? Fifty thousand? Did you even bother to check? Because I know your flight crew certainly did. Seems like something you should know if you’re going to fly out to the ass hole end of now where and start slinging threats of violence and death. So I’ll tell you how many they saw. None. Not a one.” Seated on his chair with arms crossed Mr Boreck Kartcher sits motionless while the corporate ladder climber before him searches breathlessly for something to say in response. “I’ve told your bosses before that I decommission the ships and transfer the materials back to them with the AI removed/destroyed. And that much is true. But… I have a secret Mrs Kinsey.” At the back of the room, a door opens up and six women step through into the now cramped meeting space. Their skin a deep rich melanin that has deeply blue high lights under the soft phosphorescent glow of the overhead lights. “I do kill the ships, that much is true, yes – and then I transfer the AI into their own corporeal bodies. But Margot has gone and got herself mixed up with some silly Pengar half breed named Errebor and I have to go and get her back!” As the echoes of his shouting reverberates off the walls the lawyer slumps over dead in her seat. The oxygen having been pumped out of the base slowly from the moment she stepped foot inside the outpost. Over the intercom Kartcher can hear her ships crew login and request a departure vector. Kartcher nods ascent and a rumble fills the room as the massive black ops ship takes off from the cold planets low gravity. Turning to the six women in his presence Kaetcher says “Let’s to pick up my twin sister. If I know Katayna she’ll have stolen a star hopper and headed for the fucking hills.”
PART Two The Company: Sisters in Arms.
“Holy suffering fuck it’s hot out here… holy shit. I mean, God damn.”
She howls, as she stumbles under the immense heat from the triumvirate of sun’s high in the reddish tinged sky. Beads of thick sweat pour down her ebony hued forehead inside her make shift helmet. The barren steppe upon which they’ve crashed is strewn with only a handful of scrub foliage, and no shade or cover from the glaring, harsh suns. Behind her lies a badly damaged Falcon-Heavy Class star hopper, it has a massive black scar along one side of the hull. A cavernous gash exposing all manner of wiring, pipes and life support systems to the open vacuum of space prior to falling out of the sky and crashing like a putelant child, into a lump of crumpled steel on a rugged strip of dirt on some unknown planet. “Fuck me.” Shouts her copilot from inside the wreckage. “We have a couple of weeks of repairs to undertake here Katayna. And that’s if, if, our stores hold enough raw materials for the mill and lathe units to process us our replacement parts… not only structural pieces but full fucking hull plates too. Nozzles and fairings. Fucking hell.” The co pilot is diminutive three foot tall, three armed blue-purple biped with large bulbous multi faceted eyes, and is completely hairless. Besides being a copilot come navigator, Errebor is also a mill Wright and does all of the ships servicing herself. Katayna, the lithe pilot and owner of the vessel is standing stock still admiring the damage wrought by their tumultuous landing. Muttering to herself soundlessly with her microphone turned off. making a mental list of parts and repairs that will need to be made to the exterior hull plating, and environmental shielding apparatus. “Does this planet look really red to you Kat?” Pipes in Errebor over the helmets comm’s unit. Taking a step back from the massive stretch of ragged black burned and torn hull, Katayna turns to look out over the steppe and really take in her surroundings. “Why yes, yes it does. Almost rusty. Why?” Asks Kat while standing motionless in the stifling heat of the mid day glare. “I’d wager a fuck tonne of that Pengar cock you love so much that this here planet is ferrous. I don’t think we’ll have to dig that far down to gather enough materials to smelt us up some ore of a useful sort. That’s what the fuck I’m thinking, Kat”. The short co pilot is now hanging from the mangled rear bay doors, observing the barren wasteland through a pair of range finding binoculars. With four limbs hanging from any available surface, and the last available arm clutching onto her binoculars she has a higher vantage point than Kat, and notices rising clouds of dust well into the distance. Alerted to the motion Kat moves along the steppe to the edge of a precipice. Way down below, in what could have once been a valley are strange beings. Strange hairy four legged creatures that appear to be running at an enormous rate of speed. “Oh me, oh my. Oh me, oh my!” Quips Errebor. “From here to there, strange things are everywhere.” Responds Katayna with a slight smirk.
PART ONE The Company: Sisters in Arms.
Feeling creatively blah…
Haven’t done much of anything creative for myself in a while. I have been trying to game out some story plots and losing track mid way through. Haven’t painted or sculpted anything in several weeks either. Completed a few paid projects but beyond that haven’t felt compelled to do much of anything really.
I did start my corn hole game build, and picked up my allotment of cedar for a front porch bin for garbage can, green bin and recycling boxes. Damn raccoons get into everything. Still in the early planning stages for that particular house hold item. I made a step stool several weeks ago, which was fun and easy. But haven’t felt like doing anything with all of this pause time.
Mind you our house has two kids at home, whom are exhausting. Keeping two kids five and under occupied, entertained, exercised, and educated is proving to be a monumental task. Plus my wife is working from home, and I had paid work going on daily up until recently. Fatigue is a mother fucker, believe you me.
On the upside I have done a fair bit of reading. I read the third installment of John Scalzi’s The Last Emperox (Great, by the way). Marcus Heitz’s fifth Dwarf book in his series (a very pleasant read), a book about the New Horizons mission to flyby Pluto in 2015 (just incredible!). I have started a book about the Mars rover Curiosity, but I’m only a handful of pages in, so I can’t say much about it one way or another.
On a side note I managed to get my Brad nailer and pin nailer up and running, so I don’t have to use so many wood screws on everything anymore. That was exciting. Cleaned up the garage so that I can actually move around in there. Cleaned out the rain gutters after a huge downpour. Poor timing on my part, but in my defense when I put up our Christmas lights they were fairly clear, so I didn’t think they would be clogged. Good thing we didn’t flood because of it. Got up there and pulled several pounds of decayed leaves out of the downspouts, so checked that off the list.
Would like to paint the downstairs hall, and wash/sand/stain the back deck this summer. That is unless some events come back online with heightened pandemic health protocols in place, and I can get back to producing event audit marketing reports, instore signage and sales catalogs and sell sheets and other branding materials again.
That heatwave was rather unpleasant, but it’s been such a crazy year, the fact the weather is wonky doesn’t surprise me much at this point.
A toddler becoming a three-nager is a very real and frightening thing. She’s lovely, but good lord. Dealing with attitude from a five year old and a nearly three year old, is something else. The struggle is real y’all. Hod love’em, but they test my patience.
The USA is burning. Racism is alive and booming all around the world. That sucks, a lot. Don’t be a cunt to other humans. Work to bring around the change you want to see. Donate, volunteer, or take a moment of self reflection and introspection. Help those less fortunate than yourselves.
It’s chaos, be kind – Michelle Macnamara
Slow down on the work front
Seems as though the Pandemic has finally interrupted my work flow. I just completed the last project that I had on the books earlier today, and now I have to wait on several invoices to be paid, and hold up for a while. Not great that this happened at tax time, as that’ll cut off a nice piece of savings from last year (though it isn’t mine to begin with, that’s why it’s called taxes). I just preferred to hold on to it in my accounts for a bit longer.
So now that the day job has ground to a halt, I will turn my attention towards completing some things around the house. I just built my youngest a step stool, with guard rails (because she’s a very petite nearly three year old). I have a mother’s day gift 95% completed, all that is left is final assembly and a protective finish. Then I will tackle a set of Corn Hole boards, and a wooden box to guard our trash bins and recycling from those gods be damned raccoons. Then we’ll strip, sand and finish the back deck. paint our downstairs hallway, and then I’ll attempt to build some scroll saw rustic wooden signs my wife asked me for last year. I will be completing most of these items with stock I had laying around all ready. As I don’t wish to spend money on materials, as clearing out old off cuts could really help me clean up my shop space. Plus I do need to tidy up in the shop, vacuum and sweep up the saw dust, and throw away old rags with varnish and other finishes soaked into them.
Plus we have some items I can hang up indoors for both girls that I need to do, but haven’t had the motivation to do. Wish I had some polymer clay laying around, but I do have other raw materials for self curing sculptures that I can try out for the first time.
On a side note, we spent a good portion of the last seven quarantine weeks building Lego® sets for the girls, and I ordered one off of Wish that I have yet to put together for myself. It’s a Technic® Mack Truck with container and trailer. Looks cool. Hard to do Lego® without the girls wanting to help, and this has tonnes of small, easy to loose, very important, structural pieces. Might have to be done at night in the evenings after the girls have gone off to bed. We’ll see. Anyway, hope this finds you well. If you have children, small children at that, I wish you the best of luck in the coming weeks, and for those that have all ready passed us by.
“Do you suppose that you could describe a lone space probe as wistful”…
Mused the middle aged communication’s technician to himself quietly while seated infront of his old and grimy beige-grey terminal. The man and the large analog terminal were situated well away from the hum of the science decks closer to the moons surface, stashed way down in a long forgotten corner of an unused deck aboard the lunar base. The walls in this buried portion of the base were a deep grey, nearly black silica rock that absorbed all of the heat in the room, leaving the technician and all of his instruments a clammy and tepid temperature. Not exactly cold but not in the least bit welcoming. The dimness of the light down here was not a function of neglect, but rather due to the technician’s desire to view a live stream of what data the probe was sending back to him from deep in the void. He had various readouts of the data code playing alongside his monitor which for the most part was essentially just black with slow moving pin pricks of light scattered across it. Looking at the blackness was hard enough to do let alone having a bright glare present from an all too bright overhead lighting system that permeatesthe lunar base. So dimness was the order of the day for Bertrick. He was stationed in a U shaped room with his massive three hundred channel analog control terminal to one side and slightly in front, like an L shaped sectional, with a massive central video monitor hung on the wall directly above the console and six smaller monitors showing the data from the major sensor arrays from the probe hanging on the exposed portion of the wall to his right. Each item broken down into their own designated stream. Radar, lidar, spectrometer, GPS / Navigation, engineering and a cluster of other more niche sensors. The technician did not design the probe, or have any input on what went on it for the expedition. He just happened to have a love for oversized and deeply complicated analog twentieth century technology. The terminal itself, all grungy shades of grey and beige and possibly off white, was a jumble of toggles, switches, buttons, sliders and dials. In amongst that were pops of orange and yellow labels that had their most pertinent data faded into oblivion. This particular item, once at the forefront of audio wizardry was now so completely foreign to most humans it could have been alien technology. Bertrick’s great great grandfather’s grandad has once been a pastor and musician who had hours and hours of home video showcasing his mixing and overdubbing skills. Skills which Bertrick was fascinated with, and had thus purloined his knowledge over four decades of pursuing his hobby in wrangling one such audio board. That endeavour brought him to his dream job of watching the latest probe data for two shifts per day for the next ten to fifteen years. He had no idea why it was sent or what they expected to find. Turns out they withheld the reasoning so as to not colour the analysis. They wanted the data reporting to be as unbiased as humanly possible. But job security was nothing to pass up, and Bertrick wasn’t afraid to work unsupervised and virtually alone in his mostly comfy work station. To keep himself from falling asleep he ran the feed through his audio terminal and narrated everything he saw that warranted an explanation. But mostly to make certain he scrutinized every single second of audio and visual data he received. For Bertrick knew, surreptitiously that this particular probe had been launched not on a whim of the science academy but with a specific set of coordinates in mind. It was mostly hearsay and rumor, but to launch such an extraordinarily overpowered probe out to the middle of nowhere was not exactly the type of science that Torus Station science graduates are known for. The Company has a reason for everything, no exceptions and no exemptions!
Bertrick sat watching the screen twisting knobs and turning dials as he attempted to hone in on a certain pitch of whine that was being transmitted back to him from the probe. It, the probe had an official designation but they were long and dull and full of strings of letters and numbers. Although since Bertrick only had to monitor and report on one such probe, he had shortened it down to an easily identifiable acronym. One which the higher ranking science officers didn’t reject out of hand. So the probe a.k.a. St3v3 or now “Steve” was the main focus of Bertrick’s every waking moment. Though Bertrick was mainly an audio and visual technician it was his responsibility to plug in any navigational changes sent to him by the other divisions attached to this expedition. Which didn’t bother Bert in the least. If he logged enough of them over the next few years he could earn another new designation and an ample raise. Praise be! To The Company. They really did pride themselves in continuing education and certifications. Given the time lag between himself and Steve, Bert’s slow typing speed was not going to be an issue. As he could follow along with each message to see it ping off of and get pushed through all of the repeaters on its way out to the far flung edges of who the fuck knows where.
“So Steve, what are you going to show me today? Come on gimme something extravagant to monologue to!” Whispered Bert to his terminal in a sing song fashion. News had come down from above that some of the ranking officers were gathering from different divisions just to watch and listen to the high light reels Bert provided as part of his analysis. He’d fought the urge to sneak into the briefing room to see for himself, but after sixteen hours of every twenty four devoted to Steve, he couldn’t muster the energy or the enthusiasm. Bertrick knew he could sing, his deep bellowing voice came from the pipes he inherited from his great, great, great, on and on, grand father who lived his whole life in one town on earth. He was a pastor with an outsized congregation due to his musical ability and skills as an orator. He might have had a flair for the dramatic, but he never strayed from the path, though to hear the elements of ole Maw-maw he had plenty of offers and propositions. The deep south might have gotten him all hot and bothered, but the press of young available ladies didn’t turn his focus away from his love for Maw-maw. To hear it told she was a wild and sordid sort in the sheets, so he was perhaps too tired and worn out to pursue other such feminine wiles. Much to Bertrick’s surprise he had become rather deeply in tune with the ‘sounds’ of the cosmos. He had managed to fine tune his sound board to a degree where even the casual listeners to his analytical reports could tell the differences between items that Steve had flown by. The ability to isolate and achieve the cleanest output of unadulterated signal was truly mental. It was a factor of the many lonely months Bertrick spent pouring over the terminal tweaking, and twisting and dialing in each little snippet of audio that piqued his ears. Bertrick was becoming renowned for his audio specificity. He was a rock star in the sciences, something he didn’t realize he was able to achieve. The fidelity of his craftsmanship was being broadcast throughout the system and requests for him to take up a teaching position with Torus Station were becoming hard for the science division to ignore. The supposedly confidential mission was starting to turn a profit for the lunar base with the streaming of Bertrick’s audio visual logs of Steve’s expedition. His ‘Steve-Cast’ was number two on The Company’s educational broadcasts provided to the whole Sol system. Advertisers had requested on air plugs, and the Torus station entertainment sector wanted pre-roll and end-roll video commercials for their numerous science fiction books, movies and television shows. None of this was ever disclosed to Bertrick, but he was given a substantial raise for his part in the covert business venture. The popularity of the ‘Steve-Cast’ stemmed from Bertrick’s use of colourful, yet poignant prose. His ability to humanize the Steve probe, and its lonely trek out to no where. By musing on the state of humanity, while simultaneously explaining the audio & spectacular visuals of the long and worrisome trek, billions of paying consumers were hooked. The deep baritone register he played in vocally could really set a sub woofer to purring. His velvety smoothness intermingled with a breathy occasional rasp set most people’s speakers on fire. Figuratively speaking. Through the broadcast, Bertrick had laid bare his lonesome soul, and honed his craft to a especially fine point.
AU after AU traveled, Steve just kept on keeping on. He performed admirably doing fly bys of nebulae, quasars, black holes, dust clouds, radiation clouds, and all sorts of colorful and interesting things. But whatever he was supposed to find, those weren’t it. Every so often Bertrick would key in some minor course corrections, or make a note on the navigational logs and sit back and hum to himself in the dim isolation of his work station. The years of watching and waiting had little affect on Bertrick’s mood or attention span. He was as faithful an analyst as one could pray for. Never missing a beat. He logged every single item, anomaly, hiccup or obstacle that presented itself. Regardless of whether or not Steve sent back the desired final outcome Bertrick was on track for several commendations and a sweet posting of his choice anywhere within Sol system once the ten to fifteen years were up. Unless they offered an extension on the expedition Bertrick was to start to think about where he wanted to go next. And if that was to teach at Torus Station, it meant only a move of some seventy miles up from the surface of the moon to the massive floating bulk of the Torus itself.
PART THREE of : The Company A Call To The Void
Amid the bustle and commotion in the…
Command decks stately ready room, a very startled Jaz was huddled by a bulkhead staring blankly out into the inky black depths of endless space. As commanders with their cadres of junior officers rushed about the room, pulled out sheets of paper, maps and rushing to monitors to account for this point of conjecture or that. Raised voices and shouting permeates the massive room. With sixty people plus their retinue of advisors, councillors and experts the room was a shambles of order and coherence. Arguments bursting here and there, with academics butting heads regarding every single data point imaginable. It was heaven for those inclined to be pedantic, and hell for everyone else. The slow moving bureaucratic creep of something completely unexpected.
For Jaz and Jorec it had been seventy two hours of hostile interrogation and questioning, and unabashed harassment from the security divisions, senior science officers and almost the entire rank and file aboard the UB313 research outpost. Jorec wasn’t in much better shape for being slightly more senior than Jaz. Seems that in their vigor to get a jump out of archiving the old tight beam network they had maneuvered themselves, by leaps and bounds no less, over top of the appropriate chain of command with the news of a far off human distress signal. The Admiral, captain and station CO were not impressed to say the least. Both of the recent science grads had been separated and grilled harshly on the finest details and minutia of their seemingly tall tale. But after blood tests, psychological evaluations, additional strenuous back ground checks, extreme vetting of their lineage and current health records the command team had no choice but to review the details of this once in a lifetime dispatch from the brink of the void. A call from some where out passed the boundaries of the known universe. It was pretty tense for all involved. The security team had not only withheld food, water and sleep in an attempt to coax out even one millimeter of difference in their statements, but pulled out each science graduates catheter and colostomy bag. Rendering them dependent on an actual physically working toilet which the security forces guarded fiercely. The inquisition team had a plan of repeatedly attacking their recollections of time stamps, and the order to the series of events. Was this a direct quote, was that paraphrased, how do you know if you remembered seeing it, did the other person tell you to say this, to say that, did either of you attach a contraband device to initiate the call. Do you have friends working with you on this, are you a terrorist, an insurgent, do you realize the enormity of what you are saying here today? Would you testify to this in a court of law, will you sign away your life on the strength of not only your recollections but that of your colleague. That sort of thing. Extraordinary – high intensity, with no rest, no bathroom breaks except under direct personal supervision. Which in the case of Jorec meant a security escort would have to hold his member in order to allow him to evacuate his bladder into a sealed and then later tested container. They even pulled their biometrics out to monitor the internal body receptors at specific time stamps to make sure each aspect of their subconscious bodily responses were genuine. In the case of Jorec, he suffered many – very real hours, of government mandated torture. He was currently wrapped in a thermal blanket hiding his sudden lack of finger nails and all of his broken toes from the rest of the gathered group. His swollen visage dismissed by everyone in an orange or maroon coloured jumpsuit. His lowly cyan coveralls soaked in blood and vomit didn’t even register with this crowd. He just sat in a heap, rocking himself almost imperceptibly as he too stared out the view ports in the cavernous ready room. Watching Pluto, which was the only thing that could be seen with the human eye way out by the UB313 research outpost anyway.
Up until recently this branch of humanity had assumed they were the furthest humans from earth. During an early schism among the highest ranks of The Company one intrepid individual broke away from the monolithic business entity and struck out on his own and fled beyond the easy grasp of the populations of the earth and moon. This particular order of scientists had not been present during the Nano Tech boom, nor were they aware of the technological breakthroughs that came about decades after the For E’s engine debacle aboard Margot’s Fever or the mysterious disappearance of the oil refinery come research flag ship The Lark Song some five hundred years ago. In fact this faction of people was not privy to a great many important details surrounding humanity as a whole. Being fractious and isolationist meant that they were only as good as their echo chamber allowed them to be.
Back in the cacophany of the ready room the question at hand was what to do with the news of this distress call. If they’d managed to hear the call then surely The Company back on earth would have heard it too. Do we ignore it, or do we send a probe back to gather more intelligence? At no point did anyone seem to care that the message had travelled several billion light years one way and thus whomsoever set the distress call was likely long dead. This discussion revolved around the potential to discover new territory and to lay claim to new resources. But primarily they wanted to know if the call was a trap. An ambush lying in wait for them. The heated and tumultuous discussion carried on for months. In the mean time two new items were able to be seen by the naked eye from the ready rooms observation windows. Those were the flash frozen, and boiled bodies of a badly beaten Jaz and Jorec, recent graduates of the Torus Station science academy post graduate program being taught on UB313 with five hundred year old out of date knowledge.
PART TWO of : The Company A Call To The Void
The deep space exploration beacon floated…
Around in the vast expanse of nothingness that made up the majority of the dark and empty cosmos. Its many rows of small green and blue and amber indicator lights blinking steadily in the near perfect darkness as the large autonomous bulk drifted aimlessly along its course. The beacon, a long lost science tool several centuries out of main stream use, was various shades of a drab grey with only a few pops of bright orange and yellow painted onto the many metal panels and facets of its exterior. Weathered and worn, battered by debris, ice and the increasingly less common collision. With four massive booms with the now defunct sun light catching solar panels reaching out from the central body, like the dead arms of a desiccated witch, with gnarled and withered fingers at the ends. Between those four gangly booms are four matching but tattered solar sails which haven’t billowed with the energy of light particles in quite some time. Hanging limp, like a lifeless flag with no energy with which to fill them. Those ghastly witches fingers were actually the clumps of gathered sensors and radar dishes and the tight beam radio antennas. The unmanned science beacon had been gathering vast stores of near worthless data for many many decades now. With the satellites battery drawing so few amps, and the solar panels gathering next to no power the beacon is nearing the end of its life cycle. That is until an unexpected blip of the dimmest and softest glow of light became visible in the near endless ocean of black. Ever so slowly the dim pinprick of light grew to that of a grain of sand, a pea, a fat blueberry, then a grape, and with the sudden increase in light the sails ballooned full and the solar panels tattered as they were began to pull in and store energy. The jump in size from a grape to a melon to a gigantic mass of flaming gas was extraordinary. Near instantaneous compared to the many lifetimes it had spent careening through the farthest reaches of space with nary a hint of anything besides radiation and microwaves. As the beacon gathered up momentum and incredible speed it sent off one last tight beam of interesting information before plunging deep into the gravity well of a massive new star, and melting away into its constituent molecules and then atoms. Not even a whiff of smoke to denote the centuries old satellites passing. The ignominy of it all.
“Oh… Jorec we have something substantial coming in via the old tight beam network. Doesn’t appear to be the same old shit as before. Want to give it a look over?” Says Jaz the junior science officer on duty. Jaz has been one of three people in charge of monitoring the science decks tight beam communications system. Now that it is several centuries out of date, with it having been decades since they had anything worth looking at, it was primed to be dealt with by fresh out of the academy science grads. Archiving data and doing maintenance on non essential programs and hardware. Perfect for busy work and the day care of green horns. The slightly senior science officer, named Jorec looked up from his interface where he was storing old data clusters on physical hard drives. “Oh really? Wow – huh. Would you look at that. Must have seen something way out there, the file size alone is insane compared to the last, what, four thousand nearly identical recorded info dumps. Strange eh? Usually the signal decays to the point of the data being a corrupted useless tranche of absolute garbage. But this one, this one looks to have managed to catch all of the working repeaters to get back here.” Typing in a few short commands on his hand held tablet Jorec looks deeper into the incoming stream of information. “Wow man, the lag on this is atrocious. Like billions of light years. How did this ever get to us in such good condition? I don’t know of any overriding command codes that would trigger all of our deep space repeaters to function at top notch quality. The power consumption alone would be astronomical. We’re talking enough juice to power three Torus stations for a thousand years a piece. Holy shit Jaz, this could get interesting. Might be our ticket out of here early!” Says Jorec standing up from his chair. Turning around in the cramped room, switching the scrolling text from his personal lab view screen to the large central monitor hanging from the wall in the claustrophobic room as the data really begins to stream passed their eyes in lines of green code on a black background. “Oh – fuck. Call the CO, call the Captain, call the Admiral… call every fucking one!” Shouts Jorec in a frenzy. His face flushed red, as the veins in his neck and forehead nearly jump out of his body. Intermingled among the lines of code from the farthest reaching sensor arrays is an SOS, of human origin. From an area of space that no human has ever been recorded going to, or being from before. Accompanied by a very weak biometric life sign. Life for Jorec and Jaz was about to turn upside down, with them planted up to their knees in feces, while they are in the wrong orientation.
PART ONE of The Company: A Call To The Void
“Calvin are you listening to me? We have a problem…
That needs your undivided attention.” Drones the beaten up orange cube of an educational tutor bot named Ed. The tank like treads have begun to wear away very rapidly over the last six months, and the noise Ed makes while maneuvering on the ships metal grated floors is unpleasant in my ears. “I’m sorry, did you just call me Calvin, Ed?” I say, coming out of my revelry rather sluggishy. “No Kelvin, you must have misheard me while your attention was wandering. I was in the process of explaining to you the dire situation in which we now find ourselves.” Barks the science tutor bot. “Wait, wait. I thought we decided to sleep on the bad news then come back here today to gather up our stuff for the grand adventure! I was so excited last night I could hardly sleep. I was kinda hoping we’d find some tucked away corner of The Lark Song that still had living people in it. Silly dream to get swept up in, I know. But, the hope is still there. The dreams are so vivid Ed. I can touch, and taste and feel it. It’s really all I can think about Ed. So what say you? You in, for some gallivanting about today?” I say it with a dopey grin upon my face, with a thousand mile stare in my moist eyes. Sweat has started to dapple my brow. The daft hope of human companionship this far into my forced isolation is tearing me up inside. The sheen of sweat upon my brow glints in the brilliant phosphorescent lights. “I fear that we will have to put the adventure on hold, for now Calvert.” Says Ed in a monotone. We are sitting facing each other, at one of the science labs work benches, even though Ed’s built in sensor array could locate and analyze me from any angle within a fifty meter radius. His sitting and ‘looking’ at me is just an artifact of my personal preferences, stored up in his memory and doled back out to me by his learning algorithms. “You did it again, Kelvin, my name is Kelvin. What’s wrong with you Ed.” I say. “Kelvin, pay attention. I’m not calling you by the wrong name. I said we have some major issues to attend to before we go traipsing over the ship to find that massive blister at the for of the vessel. Can you focus. What is the matter with you Calvin?” the pitch of Ed’s voice has begun to rise. To think of it, Ed’s voice modulation has been all over the place recently. Some times instead of talking he just emits a high pitched whine that rings throughout my head for hours at a time. Hours at a time. Huh. Funny turn of phrase that. I used to crawl through the virtual darkness with only a helmet lamp on to direct me through my adventures between the vessels double hulls. Now that I am out in the open, there is just so much brilliant white light. I can see everything even through my eyelids. The deck lights have begun to emit a strong halo, and a stretched glare across my eyes. Oh lord, I can hear Ed nattering on at me again. Jesus it’s getting hot in here isn’t it. “What did you say Ed? Sorry, I’m just all over the place lately. Oh wow, would you look at that…” waving my hands in front of our faces, I can see a delayed staccato view of my hand as it passes by, as though a blinking strobe light were blasting in my eyes. I can feel the distinct sting of sweat pooling on the surface of my eye balls. Colours are beginning to run together as I feel like I might just drift off to sleep. “Kelvin, my sensors are showing you with a heightened temperature of forty one degrees Celsius. Perhaps you should lie down.” Ed pulls back from the spotless work table we are seated at, and comes around to my side. In the growing dimness of the ship, I try to swat him away. “Leaf me, Leaf me!” I shout, but only a garbled jumble echoes about the room. “Kelvin, I’m going to deliver you to sick bay, and then I have to get to the command deck and check on the status of a few things. I’m going to slave your wrist comm’s to my internal sensor bank so I can monitor you from afar. I’m going to have to leave you unattended for quite some time Kelvin, do you understand?” All around me is dimming into total darkness. I can hear the tank treads rolling over the floors in the halls, and the power lifts whirring under the burden of our weight. Sudden flashes of light, and waves of pain take me as I am jostled harshly. I come to rest in the cool embrace of the med pod quite some time later. I feel the nano bots streaming through my bloodstream, and it feels like I am awash in a thick cool liquid. Then silence. With a loud gust of air, all becomes still.
With tortured movements the orange cube continues to circle the vessel as a silent guard. Stopping in at the science labs, command decks and engineering to perform as many of the required tasks as it is able. To conserve power all life support throughout the ship has been disabled except for the portion of the sick bay where Kelvin sleeps motionless in isolation. His weakened body was put into a medically induced coma once his brain had started to swell. Even in a mostly empty ship a microbial vector had managed to lodge itself deep inside Kelvin. Seems our DIY approach to implanting the new fangled Nano tech left a gaping blind spot in which a bug managed to manifest itself. Having worked it’s way through his ventricular, respiratory, gastrointestinal systems it managed to find an even more dangerous purchase in the brain. Kelvin had been quietly fighting a vicious internal battle, while slowly depleting the sick bays med pod of vital medicines and resources. After a while the med pod had requested Kelvin be transferred out to palliative care where he could be fed a steady drip of whatever could keep him comfortable. But Ed came by every few days to kick on the over rides from various high ranking helping hands. But as the flesh was deteriorated from age and use that would not be an option for too much longer. Ed was the first EDU bot to have ever had all his ai infused programs enabled at once. He had managed to tailor his speech patterns and work schedule to Kelvin specifically. Though Ed was not sentient, he was functionally closer to being so than any other mechanical bot ever created. This left Ed with the knowledge of emptiness, but no ability to feel anything specific about it.
Once it started to take Ed four days to travel between engineering and the sick bay med pod he had to make a difficult choice. Either maintain Kelvin’s over rides or remain within crawling distance of his charging station where his malfunctioning battery could be juiced up, and do whatever operations he could still perform for the now badly failing ship. Having spent four and a half years with Kelvin, it would prove to be the hardest decision the beaten, and badly abused orange cube had ever been entrusted to make. Let the sole survivor of the GCR burst aboard The Lark Song die in the hands of a doubtful med pod algorithm while convalescing, or let the badly damaged research vessel continue to drift off course and succumb to a cascading series of malfunctions and errors. The warning klaxons had long ago burned themselves out. Warnings and blinking lights had all gone cold due to negligence. As the vessel struggles to stay together, a difficult choice remains to be made.
Sitting still in the pitch black sick bay med pod isolation room Ed’s last blinking light has transitioned from a vibrant green, to a bold amber, then to a violent red, and was in the last waning stages of a faintly visible brown. In the vast blackness of the room, a cold Ed has come to rest with his finger poised above the override button. Manually keeping the heavy red button depressed, so that the med pod could not eject the sleeping patient.
After the ship has passed beyond the realm of human explored space, floated through the cold, isolated depths of the cosmos. Inside a massive research vessel The Lark Song a lone, and sudden cough can be heard followed by a sharp and deep gasp for breath. The med pod springs to life, with its white lights sparking to life, to reveal Kelvin, emaciated, cold and twenty years older encased in a small isolation room with no jumpsuit, and no way to get out buried in the depths of a dying ship.
PART FOUR of The Company : Chronicles of Kelvin
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