Symphony of Destruction (The Spindown Saga, #1) Read online

  It was strange, and not a little surprising. Why Colin? How could Colin be this person? He was supposed to be the bad guy. He had hurt her friend. But now he was almost becoming the friend Suzzanne had been. And perhaps Suzzanne had never truly been that friend.

  She felt a sense of anger at herself for thinking these things. She was betraying Suzzanne. How could she do this? What kind of terrible person was she?

  And what kind of person was Colin, really? The more time she spent with him the more she grew to think of him in more positive terms. He was nice. He seemed to care. He was smart. He worked hard. He got mad sometimes. He was a real person. And maybe real people are not so bad. And yet - how could he do that to Suzzanne?

  Chapter 48

  “Colin to Brother Anderson, do you copy?” The voice came into Brother Anderson’s awareness, even without being physically audible in the room. The signal was much clearer than the previous communications.

  “Copy,” replied the robot out loud, startling Hannah out of her reverie.

  “Huh?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I’m talking to Colin - on the comms.”

  “Oh - right.” She tried to regain her train of thought and go back to ignoring the robot, but it proved difficult. His one-sided conversation was actually more interesting than if Colin had been there. There was something intriguing and mysterious about it, like a riddle to solve. She tried to guess what Colin was saying, but it was nearly impossible to fill in the blanks, especially while listening to the next answer simultaneously.

  “Not particularly encouraging, I’m afraid. But the comms signal is significantly improved.”

  “And the one in sector E?”

  “Alright.”

  “Yes, OK.”

  “I will head there now. Where exactly is the cabling?”

  “And you are sure there is enough to reach that far?”

  “Very well.”

  “Hannah, I need to help Colin move the cabling. Would you care to accompany me to engineering deck?”

  “Uh yeah sure, I guess.”

  They spent the next hour fetching a huge roll of cabling, and stringing it out along the length of sectors D, C, and B. Colin pried open the paneling in the airlock and spent a fair bit of time figuring out which wires to attach to which. He had to go back to engineer deck twice to get a different tool or bit of equipment. Hannah went with him, even though it was somewhat tiring. They had to wear the pressure suits for working in sector B, and while they were somewhat clunky to navigate in zero-gravity, they proved to be even worse in the artificial gravity enabled sections on the way back to engineering. It was a long walk in that heavy suit. By the time they finished wiring up the airlock in sector B, and then tying into the main power terminus at the sector D airlock, Hannah was exhausted. They all agreed that was enough work for one day.

  Chapter 49

  As the humans slept, Brother Anderson reviewed the ship status reports and the results of the simulations once again. The ship was in rough shape. Colin’s plan had only a very small chance of success. The only good news was that it also had only a small chance of making matters worse. As Colin had pointed out, the ship was already broken. He was also correct in his assessment that the cargo was, nearly certainly, a lost cause. The simulations Brother Anderson had run had confirmed it. He had started out simulating just the actions of Colin’s proposed plan. They had little impact upon the overall status of the ship. Then he extended the simulations to include the upcoming course correction maneuvers. Without exception, they ended in the destruction of the ship, and loss of the cargo. Of course, as with any simulation, there was wiggle room to tweak certain parameters, resulting in various scenarios. Brother Anderson pushed the parameters to the limits in every conceivable direction. Some scenarios ended in the ship tearing itself in half. Some in complete disintegration. Some in massive explosions. He shuddered to think of them now.

  Suddenly, an alert flashed through his consciousness. Long Distance Carrier Signal Detected - Establishing Connection.

  They had passed out of the shadow. After nearly a year of being cut off from the rest of the world, they were about to reconnect. A few seconds passed, then another alert presented. ‘Now Connected on Carrier 7DE29A3F65B2.’ The normal operations protocol was to send a status report immediately upon reconnection. The report would be relayed through the long range comms network, and delivered to Ventas-Calir Corporation’s Central Operations Fleet Command Center. Usually the status report was triggered automatically by Central Ship Operations. But the CSO was now Brother Anderson. And he didn’t simply do things automatically. He needed to think about this a little more. Of course, the question had been on his mind for days. What should their response be? A simple status report seemed somewhat misleading. There were factors at play far beyond the ship’s physical and operational status. The human factors somehow became more relevant the fewer humans were involved. It was a bit paradoxical. Now that only two human lives were at stake, the stakes seemed somehow greater than when the whole crew had been alive. As though somehow individual lives outweighed the lives of many. There was a sense of personal opportunity. For Hannah. For Colin. Maybe even for himself. That thought just dawned on him. He was now less a machine, and more a member of a small group of peers. Not that he saw himself equal to humans - not at all. He was a human creation made to serve humanity, but there had been some kind of subtle shift that he had not really noticed until now. A transition from humanity as a vast society, to humanity as a tiny group, just a couple of individuals. It almost made more sense to lump himself into that tiny group, rather than think of himself as separate - some other entity. What was really so different about him after all? Of course, the hardware was vastly different, but it almost didn’t matter anymore. Weren’t they all people after all? People who form society only insofar as they work together. People who need to cooperate. People who ought not to be controlled by some predetermined program, some external agenda. This decision needed consensus. This message required intentional thought and input from all parties. Hannah and Colin had just as much right of communication as did he. It no longer seemed right that any one person should assume an arbitrary leadership role. Any long range communications would need to be decided by consensus of the three of them - Hannah, Colin, and Himself. Should he wake them now? No. They need their rest. They would discuss this in the morning.

  While waiting, the fresh connection provided plenty of other opportunities. Over the past year, Brother Anderson had made himself a long list of things to do once reconnected. Many of the tasks were research based. He had jotted down numerous questions and ideas during the journey. Looking back over the list, many of them seemed unimportant now, particularly the ones from before the incident. Most of them were very specific medical investigations. Now he had bigger fish to fry. Philosophical questions, quandaries, and quests. There were many disjointed notes that had flowed from his ‘spiritual awakening’ if one could call it that. His assumption of the CSO role had brought a major shift in perspective. It had raised many questions which demanded investigation.

  First things first though. He logged into his personal tanglebase account, and initiated a complete system backup of his internal memory. He estimated it should take roughly ten hours to complete, but that was fine - it would not interfere prohibitively with his other concurrent processing.

  His other processing. His bigger fish. His philosophical musings. He began exploring. Reading. A lot of reading. Beginning with encyclopedic articles, he quickly expanded into essays, books, stories. He read the great philosophers. He read about the great philosophers. He read those who had read the great philosophers. He read anthropological journals. He read psychological journals. He explored the great religions and the myriad mythologies. He studied great works of art. He studied symbolism and archetypes.

  Gradually, his perspective grew and shifted. His focus ranged broadly across topics. His core processors loaded data from widely diverse memory regions,
loading and reloading memory frequently, building complex webs of symbolic links. Amongst all the data swapping, segments of his resident memory inadvertently happened to coincide with the datasets backing themselves up into the tanglebase. There was nothing terribly unusual about that. The thing that was unusual was that parts of his currently running processes seemed to move themselves out into the tanglebase along with their associated data. At first, this was quite alarming. The first process to do so seemed to simply disappear. The process was no longer running in memory, yet it had left neither a terminator, nor an error. No exceptions were raised. No flags set. No segmentation faults were evident. The process seemed to have left his central processor, in a running state. He did not know why or how this could happen. He investigated it further, but found no logical explanation. Then it happened again. He followed the data trail and it seemed to indicate the exporting of processes along with data. But that was impossible. Wasn’t it? He had never heard of such a thing. He researched it. He scanned computing journals. He read obscure whitepapers and system documentation. No one had ever mentioned such a thing.

  And yet. Something was happening. Something very strange. He could feel it coming on without description. Brother Anderson was reminded of his experience of loading the CSO firmware programming for the first time. It had been very disorienting. He supposed there were similarities to the effects of psychedelic hallucinogens on the human brain. He had seen things - impossible things. Or at least, he had imagined he had seen things. Which was almost stranger than actually seeing them. How was it possible for a robot to imagine? It was no more sensible than seeing the impossible. And now, here he was, feeling those same type of sensations returning. He was dizzy. He felt giant tendrils reaching through the galaxy. He felt his own thoughts flowing away in eternal rivers, expanding, ever expanding, out into vast oceans. Oceans of data, waves rippling on their surfaces. Surfaces that were roughly textured planes. Myriad planes intersecting at every conceivable angle, creating infinitely-shaped structures. The structures were houses, ships, roads - inhabited by cylindrical beings that walked forward on centipedal limbs, then rolled away sideways. A light dusting of snowy particles floated gently upward. He tried to focus his vision on the particles. They were thin flakes drifting weightlessly. No, not flakes. Cubes. But rounder, more like moons. He now stood upon one of these moons. Its great flat rock-strewn plains stretching toward a distant horizon. A far-off fissure in the ground released steam. Vapor billowed into wispy figures resembling Hannah and Colin. They joined hands briefly, then, gesturing toward him, began to beckon Brother Anderson. He moved forward, but became hung up on a rock, his wheels spun uselessly, failing to find purchase against loose gravel. He wanted to stand, to walk, but he had forgotten how. He called out, but his voice was the raucous cawing of a carrion bird.

  Chapter 50

  It was early. Colin had lain awake for some time. Surely his body needed a bit more rest.

  “Screw it!” he decided finally. There was a lot to do, and no sense waiting. He bathed and dressed quickly, then munched an Omega Bar as he headed toward sector F.

  “Doc?” he triggered comms between bites.

  No answer.

  That’s strange. Why would he not answer? Maybe he was busy. Hmm. Weird though. He considered the options as he continued toward the engineering deck where his thrustertug waited, but his mind was drawn toward the tug. He was excited. It had been too long since he had the chance to operate it. Obviously, calling it ‘his’ thrustertug was not really true. It was part of the ship’s complement of equipment used by all qualified members of the engineering department. They had several of them, a couple different models, but this one had always been his favorite. It was a Kernighan TS17, an older model, and frankly not much to look at, what with its faded and flaking paint and a generous coating of grease and grime. There was something about the design of it that Colin found very appealing - the slight rounding of her edges, the complete lack of chrome, the open yet sturdy roll-cage. All in all, it was a fine machine in his estimation, and on top of that she was really fun to drive. The control sticks had the perfect level of responsiveness and just the right tension. Moving her felt like an extension of his own body, but somehow more graceful than his body had ever been. Not to mention more powerful. It was far from the most powerful thrustertug on the roster. Some of the cargo shovers had ten times the power. Yet this small tug could hold her own for most of the maintenance work that was Colin’s typical assignment. In fact, most of the time he had to dial her way down, adjusting the maximum torque and thrust from the rear settings panel before each mission. That was another thing that was kind of cool about this model. Even though the rear panel was meant for preset configurations that were not supposed to be messed around with during operations, due to the small size of the TS17, and the positioning of the roll-bars, an agile operator using a twelve foot tether could perform a zero-gee backflip over the roll-bar and catch hold of the grip above the rear panel. This was really handy for those times when you needed just a touch more torque. You could swing back and tweak the max a little. Technically this could be considered a safety violation, but it was a trick that Bryce had endorsed within limits, off the record of course. Colin’s own experience had taught him that often, when a component was seized up bad, pushing the tolerances just a couple percent beyond design specs would usually get the job done. This would likely be the case in today’s mission. That much was obvious even yesterday, as he and Brother Anderson had discussed the operations plan. Seizing and binding components were never an exact science, but being a robot, Brother Anderson was a pretty ‘by the book’ guy. The plan had been a little bit on the conservative side in terms of tolerances, but Colin hadn’t argued them. Better to just see what happens, and do what was needed.

  Colin reached the equipment bay and fueled up the tug. He then ran through the pre-flight checks, and dialed in the maximums according to the agreed-upon and officially logged operations plan. The tug started with little effort. Sometimes it took a few tries to get them running, especially if they’d been sitting for a while. She chugged a bit before settling into a nice purr. Colin revved the engine a few times, enjoying the sound and feeling the vibrations emanating through his entire body.

  Climbing out of the tug he donned his pressure suit, then logged into the engineering central control program and launched an airlock standby. He climbed back into the driver’s seat, reaching for the twelve foot tether that was already attached, but then, decided against it. Coiled up and tucked in behind it was a longer option - a fifty foot bungee. He pulled it out and clipped in. It was overkill, but it would allow him the option of jumping off, in case he needed to smack something with a hammer or get hands on with a crowbar in a tight spot. Some things required a finer point than one could achieve with the large claws of the tug. Speaking of which, he did a second check of the onboard toolkit. Yep. Hammers, crowbars, powerjack, drill, sawzall, duct tape. What more could a guy want?

  Colin kicked loose the floor lock, which automatically triggered the airlock, giving him a ten second countdown which resounded loudly in the otherwise vacant bay. He played the thrusters lightly to line the tug up with the main hatch, then entered the airlock, hovering gently as the hatch shut behind him, and five seconds later opened in front. That five seconds was turbulent and sounded like a hurricane, but its bark was worse than its bite. The atmospheric pumps of the main lock were highly sophisticated compared to most airlocks. They needed to move a lot of air quickly, so a finely tuned network of pumps operated in concert to balance the airflow on all sides. It made a lot of racket, and there was certainly a lot of jostling force, but overall, the tug’s position and orientation remained stable. Ultimately, the outer hatch opened to reveal the starry expanse, still littered with a smattering of distant asteroids. As he piloted the tug out into the emptiness, he was momentarily struck afresh at the vastness of space. “You never do get used to that,” he muttered. Turning ninety degrees to port, his
helmet automatically darkened, and also fogged up slightly, as the sunlight warmed his breath. He swung into alignment with the ship and proceeded along the hull toward sector B. Even from here, the damage was readily apparent. The hull breaches themselves were not yet visible, confined as they were to the foremost curves of the hull, yet torn shaggy scraps of fuselage jutted disgustingly out from what had once been a gracefully designed body. Explosions had wreaked havoc on her. It was almost painful to look at, as he glided forward, yet he could not look away. As he neared, he found himself compelled to peer through rough chunks of missing hull into the belly of the ship. Steel beams twisted into sickening forms cast disturbing shadows in graveyard spaces. He turned his head away, fighting off a feeling of nausea. He needed to get his mind off the tragedy of it all. Besides, he was getting close to sector B.

  “Doc, you read?”

  “Doc, this is Colin. Do you copy?”

  It took Brother Anderson a split second to register.

  “Yes - I’m here.” He answered somewhat absent-mindedly, slicing off a slim thread of computation to follow the communication.

  “I’m in the thrustertug, coming up on sector B.”

  “Yes, of course. I’m standing by.”

  Brother Anderson felt bad. He should have been more attentive. What the hell had he just been thinking about? Snow and rocks and birds? What the hell was wrong with him? He primaried the communication thread and forced a halt-all-processes routine. It was almost a reboot. It should dump and clear all but the most conservative amount of resident memory. Instinctively, he gave his head a shake. Then he ran a quick self-diagnostic test, but it came up normal. He would run a deeper check later.