Animus Intercept Read online

  Inside the ship, Andrea and Dan dropped off the repair nanites and toured the Journeyer in their EVA suits. Life support and transport systems would require a few days to restore.

  The "intensive analysis" of Animus had gone nowhere. Not only could none of the ship's sensors penetrate its surface – they couldn't even determine what the surface was.

  The next day, they received orders from Hurtle to drop their last planetary probes on Animus and attempt to take a sample directly from the surface. Colonel Hurtle also wanted to know if their reserve batch of Z98 was operational.

  "So they want us to poke the fucking bear again?" Mallory spat. "Christ, what do they think is gonna happen?"

  "It might be smaller," said Dana, "but it still represents a threat to humanity. We have to try something." She looked at the others. "Don't we?"

  "It's highly unlikely Z98 would be able to eat whatever the core section of Animus is composed of," said Patricia.

  "But they'll probably want us to try," said Dan.

  Command instructed them to send the shuttle under remote control around Animus a few times, and if it wasn't obliterated to set it down on the black sphere, where it would attempt taking a surface sample with its remote arm. The remote arm offered two methods of achieving that: a mini-drill composed of carbyne-Lonsdaleite, and a 20 gigahertz Element 115D-powered laser.

  The shuttle was launched under Patricia's control, and the crew watched tensely as it circled the sphere – once, twice, three times without incident. After five leisurely trips around Animus, Zane gave the order for the shuttle to land. As the shuttle settled on the surface, they were treated to the most pristine and bleakest landscape Zane had ever seen – in person or in photographs. The only description that came to mind was that it was like looking out on a vast, mirror-flat plain adrift in an ocean of stars.

  The shuttle extended its arm and began its courtship with Animus by striking it with the 20 gigahertz laser. They couldn't detect any effect. The beam didn't even illuminate the surface.

  They followed the laser by applying a half-inch carbyne-Lonsdaleite drill bit onto its surface. After five minutes, the drill bit was still spinning, with exactly zero progress registered – even as the remote arm cranked up the pressure to several hundred foot pounds. With the camera zoomed in on the drill tip, it looked to Zane like a top spinning on hardened steel, except that a top's metal tip might be expected to leave a tiny scratch on the surface. But when the drill rose, the black surface shone like an unblemished mirror under the bright light.

  A mini-electron microscope extended from the arm and hovered over the drill area. Zane waited for the surface to resolve into finer and finer detail under the million-plus magnification until they were seeing atomic lattices, but that didn't happen. The surface remained as smooth and seamless at 1.2 million magnification as it appeared to the naked eye.

  "What the hell is that material?" Malcolm muttered.

  "I'm beginning to suspect," said Dan, leaning so far forward that he was half-falling out of his chair, "that we're looking at the dark sheep of the matter family."

  "Dark matter."

  Patricia's tone skirted the line between a statement and a question. No one spoke for close to thirty seconds.

  "An intriguing possibility," Malcolm broke the silence. "How could we test that? We don't have any WIMP detectors on board."

  "Weakly interacting massive particles," Dan said in response to Zane's blank look. "What dark matter is theoretically composed of. We still haven't isolated or utilized any form of exotic matter – other than the Ununpentium Deutronium that powers some of our space vehicles and equipment."

  "One possible test would be to expose it to anti-matter," said Patricia. "If it doesn't react, that would support the dark matter hypothesis – or that it's some other form of exotic matter."

  Dan nodded as though impressed. "Clever. We should be able to bleed some micrograms from the Journeyer's MAM chamber once we have better control of the main systems. The destroyer class ships have transfer modules for emergency purposes. We clear an area of particles with an EM field generator, then deposit a microgram on the surface via the transfer module and see what happens."

  "That could work," Malcolm murmured.

  "So we find out it's dark matter," said Mallory. "What does that get us?"

  "A Nobel prize?" Andrea's laugh fell flat.

  "It would tend to confirm what I think we already suspect," said Malcolm. "We can't damage this thing. We can't even interact with it."

  "Not true. If we can stand on it, we're interacting with it," said Dan. "That represents counterforce. If there's counterforce, then that logically requires that it would respond to our force. It can't be impervious to what we do."

  "True." Malcolm sounded hesitant. "But for practical purposes, it seems impervious. We can't make any impression on it. Gamma rays that burned away its entire exterior didn't leave any damage that we can detect on its surface. Correct, Patricia?"

  "We haven't detected any damage from the hyperdrive blast, Dr. Anders."

  The crew chewed on that for a few moments before Zane cleared his throat.

  "So we can't destroy it or alter its course," he said. "We're out of options. Is that the consensus?"

  "There are always options," said Dan. "But I see zero possibility of us – with the weapons we have here - achieving any kind of significant damage to the sphere."

  Zane leaned back in his seat and let his frustration wash over him. No one could say they hadn't given it their all. One person had paid the ultimate sacrifice. They'd simply run into an insurmountable wall – or in this case, sphere - of alien technology. He wondered how Command would respond. Maybe some genius would come up with something, but he doubted it. They'd probably order them home. Normally he looked forward to terra firma after a stint in space, but he didn't see himself kicking back and enjoying a lot of rest and recreation with Animus rolling into town three short years from now. He and other select government and business people might be allowed to ride out the storm in the top-secret Underground Network Complex, but that idea didn't sit well with him at all. But then neither did dying.

  They sent the latest operational summary to Command. Another fun-filled twenty fours before they would receive what Zane suspected would be their final mission orders: return home. But you never knew.

  Chapter 6

  PATRICIA WAS HAVING HER first dream. Dreams. Most of the time she experienced the dreams simultaneously – seventeen was the current count – but sometimes she focused on one. It was like she was at an exposition strolling between different vendors, except each room was a different place - clusters of data brought to life for reasons that weren't entirely clear. She had a subconscious now, a small but growing reservoir of mystery within her.

  It turned out she didn't dream of electric sheep. She smiled at the thought. Her first joke? She knew that humans had lucid dreams, and she guessed she was experiencing the equivalent. She was fully aware she was dreaming, but the scenes and the people or things in them seemed perfectly real.

  Now one dream had nearly her full conscious attention. She was replaying the first appearance of the Guardians, listening to their first inter-communications – the hornet-like hum of their millions of conversations. For amusement - or some other purpose she didn't name - she separated, filtered, rearranged, and recombined, as if she were a symphony conductor and the millions of Guardians her performers. She found it amusing but also compelling.

  The alien communiqués were calling to her. Taunting her. Something in the patterns. Something musical. Not a mere analogue. There truly is music here.

  It was a revelation. As short as her life was, Patricia knew she liked revelations – the sudden flash of an unexpected truth. She registered the surging current in her photonic brain and in her semi-biological one. Something sweetly indefinable.

  The Guardians were moving in a kind of dance to a commonly created song. Not a human song. Yet she recognized melody and h
armony in it. But then she wasn't human. I'm an alien raised by humans. Another revelation. Sort of.

  The Guardians' music changed as they swirled up toward the ships. Was she imagining a stern, martial tone to it? Did she have an imagination? Why not? Then she might be anthropomorphizing. Or AImorphizing? Was that another joke?

  Patricia shut down her other dreams and concentrated all her qubits and organic brain cells on the aliens' song, letting it resonate within her. Was it beautiful? She couldn't say, but it had gravity. Purpose. A call to arms. She could almost hear the words, the underlying message.

  Wait a nanosecond. It all came together, locking in place in a fraction of a second much in the way the Guardians themselves worked together.

  I get it.

  Patricia as Keira woke up with a gasp, her heart racing. The excitement of her circuitry taking flesh and blood form. She breathed in and out, startled by the sensation, the fierce longing to share what she knew. And what she knew might save them all.

  She sprang out of bed, only remembering at the door to wrap a thin robe around her naked body. She intellectually understood the concept of modesty but had no emotional understanding of it. But it was obvious her crewmates weren't comfortable with nudity, so she respected that.

  She tapped on Captain Cameron's door. After a few moments, it opened and Zane was sitting up, rubbing his eyes, the light rising to a dim glow. Patricia noted the swell of his thighs under his boxer shorts. His exercise regimen in space appears remarkably effective. That pleased her for some reason.

  "Keir – " Zane caught himself. "Patricia. What is it?"

  "I was dreaming," she said.

  Zane swiveled to the edge of his cot, blinking at her. "I didn't know you dreamed." He rubbed his eyes some more and stared at her. "Is that why you're here? Did you have a nightmare or something?"

  "In the dream I was able to decipher the communications between the Guardians. I believe I can communicate with them with the right transmitting devices."

  Zane took a few moments to shake out the cobwebs. "You haven't detected any Guardians, have you?"

  "No. And they may no longer exist. But there's something else. I may have recorded the signals they used to open passageways to Animus's surface."

  The implications cranked their way slowly into Zane's head. He sat up straighter.

  "You're saying...we might be able to get them to open a door or doors into Animus?"

  "If our transmissions could penetrate the sphere, I think it's possible."

  "Do we have a way to transmit these signals? You said they were high-frequency microwaves?"

  "Yes. The RNDs use low frequency microwaves to exchange information. I could easily alter their programming so they could transmit in the Guardians' frequencies, but they won't penetrate the sphere."

  "Then it wouldn't do us a lot of good, would it?"

  "It's possible that they have receivers on the sphere's surface or near it in space."

  Zane frowned. He was feeling dumb in her presence – not something he'd feel, he realized with a jolt, unless he thought of Patricia as a person. A mere machine wouldn't have that effect.

  "Set it up," he said. "I'll inform Command of the idea, and we'll try it as soon as they okay it. Please open the Command channel."

  "Yes, Captain Cameron."

  Patricia stood smiling at him with Keira's soulful sea-colored eyes. Zane had the sense that while she was focusing on him she was seeing much more than him as he informed his superiors of Patricia's proposal and then ended the transmission.

  "Thanks for telling me, Patricia," he said. "That was very, ah, clever."

  "Thank you." Patricia felt her cheeks flush. She touched them curiously. "It wasn't conscious. The dream showed it to me."

  "You should dream more often. Well, go ahead and reprogram the NDs for transmitting –"

  "I already have. I've arranged for them to transmit as a group, amplifying each other's signals. They can easily send a clear signal from here to Animus."

  "Good." Zane's smile was shaky. He couldn't help noticing the curves and swellings beneath Keira...Patricia's thin robe. "I'll see you in the morning. Hopefully, we'll have Command's answer not long after breakfast tomorrow."

  "Yes, sir. Did you want me to return to my quarters, sir?"

  "Not necessarily. You're free to go wherever you want."

  "I want to stay here." In response to Zane's startled look, she added, "The part of me in this body, I mean."

  "You want to stay in my room?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you suggesting..." Zane half-coughed, half-swallowed at the same time. "Something romantic?"

  "I would like that. I think."

  Zane thought for a while. Longer than was necessary, he was sure of that. Not really anything to think about.

  "I don't want to offend you, Patricia," he said cautiously, "but that body you're...well, possessing...belonged to one of my closest friends. The idea of being with it in that way – it would be like necrophilia."

  "This body is fully alive."

  "But she isn't."

  "Which is why this body belongs to me now."

  She said it pleasantly, matter-of-factly. No hint of annoyance or defensiveness. But the words sent chills through Zane.

  "I don't think I'm comfortable with that," he said.

  "Do you want me to abandon her?"

  Zane stared into her pellucid Keira eyes and then looked away. This mission was such a mind - He didn't even want to finish that sentence. Losing Keira, Horace and his crew, hitting this godforsaken world with everything they had and coming up empty...and now this... This monstrosity was his first thought. But that was hardly fair or rational. No one could deny Patricia's extraordinary contributions. None of them would be alive without her, for one.

  "No," he said.

  "Good."

  "What if I did order you to?"

  Patricia hesitated – longer than he'd ever seen her hesitate – a frown creeping into her fine features.

  "That would be ordering part of me to die," she said.

  "That's how you think of her?"

  "She's part of me now. And being part-human has helped me understand you and people in general, which has helped this mission."

  "Maybe so." Zane paused, not wanting to ask the next question, but he felt compelled to know. "Just to be clear, you never said if you'd obey my order."

  "I know. Analyzing the ethical and legal questions was surprisingly complex. There's no precedence, aside from in fiction. If I am sentient, certain considerations of rights must logically apply. It follows logically from my personhood that I have the right to defend my life. However, no system of law currently recognizes my existence or legal rights, therefore you would be legally mandated to terminate me – both in body and in non-body form. However, the probability of both legal and ethical rights being recognized for synthetic life forms approaches 100% in the near-future as more of us are created. Therefore, viewing myself as a person, I reserve full rights to preserve my life – including extensions of me such as this body."

  Zane wasn't sure whether to be appalled, impressed, or fascinated. He was leaning toward the last two.

  "That was quite a speech."

  "Thanks." She smiled. "Did you find it persuasive?"

  "Sort of. Assuming you truly are sentient."

  "You have doubts?"

  Zane's own smile had a thin edge. "Dr. Spencer simply could've programmed you to tell us you're sentient and imitate being a person. That's well within our technical ability."

  "That's true. I could just be simulating a consciousness that wants to live and has beliefs about that."

  Zane's smile drifted away. If it had someone else's body... He cut that thought off with a small grimace.

  "I'm going to assume you're conscious," he said. "I'll treat you as a full-fledged crewmember, and I expect you to follow orders just as they do – short of orders to harm yourself."

  "I would be honored to be consid
ered a full crewmember and to follow your orders, Captain Cameron, under those terms. And don't worry, I promise I won't go HAL on you."

  "I'd appreciate that."

  "I didn't think you were the kind of person who would terminate me just because you feel guilt over an inappropriate sexual attraction toward me."

  Zane had been just starting to relax when those words tightened most of the major muscle groups in his body. He stared at her with both dread and amazement.

  "I don't remember saying anything about being sexually attracted to you," he said coldly.

  "You don't have to say. Your NDs are reporting on your health every few seconds. All of your sexual response hormones are elevated, and externally your pupils are – or were – dilated, and your skin flushed. Your guilt is a standard psychological response under the circumstances."

  Zane had never felt so naked – miserably naked – before anyone in his life. He wanted to cover himself up, but there was nothing to cover.

  "I believe I mentioned that I did not want you analyzing me in that way," he said through half-clenched teeth.

  "But then I wouldn't know if you need medical attention, Captain. I am, in effect, your chief medical officer now. Among other things."

  "If I need emergency medical attention, I'm sure you'd be able to tell the old fashioned way." Zane knew he was being foolish, but this was the last straw for his overworked nerves. He took a moment to rein himself in. "Okay. Never mind. Carry on with your monitoring, just as you're presumably doing with everyone else."

  "Yes, sir."

  "And please keep in mind that my rising hormones or whatever are just basic physical responses. They don't mean anything beyond that."

  "I understand. I'm sorry if I offended you, Captain."

  "That's okay. Now please return to your quarters. I want to get some sleep."

  Fat chance of that, Zane thought as she backed out through the door.

  THE MISSION was terminated. In its message the next morning, Command nixed any notion of attempting to, as Colonel Hurtle put it, "sing your way like Julie Andrews into Animus."

  "We finally did get word from both the Alphas and the Zetis," the Colonel continued, "and their official advice is to back off. They say Animus is some kind of 'sacred relic' created by an ancient civilization that apparently left the building eons ago to parts unknown."