First Contact

Chapter 497: Eternity

The startram was clean, orderly looking, as if it had never been used before. There were some hints about the age. The style was woefully out of date, the seats all plas and chrome, the windows were smart windows with thicker glass than what was used in modern construction, and it was less luxury and more utilitarian than modern ones.

The startram was halfway between the outside layer of Layer Gamma and the inner layer of Layer Delta, in the thin vacuum zone that the mag-pipes pulled the huge fusion reactors through. There were 'space elevator' stations every few thousand miles. Giant cables stretching between the layers with massive facilities on either side of the mag-pipes for the startram to load and unload supplies and people who would rather take the space elevator than go to the next startram station.

It's all just so damn big, Herod thought to himself, staring down through the floor. He'd turned it transparent so he could see what they were traveling over. Below him rivers and forests and mountains whipped into view for a moment then were swept away by the sheer speed of the startram.

Wally sat next to him, folded up into a box, plugged into the wall socket so he could recharge.

Herod had spent the last three days working on part of the SUDS Disaster Management System. There were huge parts that had to be withdrawn from one section, moved via cargo startram to the area, then carefully moved with antigrav into position.

True, he'd just supervised then ran the self-checks, but he still felt exhausted.

He'd noticed that quite a bit. Somehow he had been getting 'tired' more and more recently.

Herod had climbed aboard the startram and immediately gone to sleep for almost fourteen hours. Defrag and memory maintenance was only part of it. The 'sun' was behind polarized magtrack, the system pulling in the majority of the thermal and radiation output of the massive fusion reaction, leaving everything dark.

But he didn't feel like sleeping again.

He kept dreaming.

Even turning off his dream generator had not helped.

He still dreamed.

YOU'RE FUCKED NOW! had been a constant in his dreams.

She was chasing him. Always chasing him. Laughing madly, her eyes crazed, a cigarette held in her mouth, the smoke wafting behind her like a coal engine racing down the tracks.

Herod rubbed his eyes. He knew, being in a disaster frame, that it shouldn't matter. He was just pressing soft gripping material against lens covers, but it helped.

He opened his eyes, staring down, and suddenly frowned.

There were domiciles way down there.

Normally it was just street, hazard, and safety lights.

There were lights down there.

"Sam?" Herod tried.

Sam had been busy, trying to handle the massive amount of people that had flooded into the system. It wasn't enough that there were still billions of records to process from the First Human-Mantid War (Something he didn't know existed. As far as Herod and everyone else knew, there was just the Human-Mantid War, not three total, including a 1% line) and that wasn't even counting 8,000 years of records as humanity spread out through the stars.

"Sam?" Herod tried again.

"Yea, Harry, what's up?" Sam asked.

"What sector am I over?" Herod saw the domicile section sweep away.

"Um, one second. OK, which layer, inner or outer?"

"Inner," Herod said, closing his eyes and replaying the memory.

The 'sun' was just rising in that area, streetlights turning off, lights on in the domiciles.

"Hmm, Inner Delta Layer, Grid Tango Three Bravo Nine," Sam said. He finished off rattling out a twelve digit grid coordinate. "Why?"

"I need you to stop the tram at the next station," Herod said.

"I need you to repair the buffer interface master lines. Otherwise I can't move people out of what is supposed to be temporary storage and into processing," Sam said. "Don't make me rip your... Sorry, sorry."

Herod nodded. "I understand. Just hold it together, Sam," he said.

Sam had started getting more and more aggressive, to the point that Herod avoided eVR or VR interactions with the other Digital Sentience.

"Why do you need me to stop?" Sam asked, his voice more steady.

"There's something at one of the places the startram passes over. Something new," Herod said. "I need to check it out."

"You've been over that section a hundred times in the last five years. Why do you need to go down to check it now?" Sam asked.

"This," Herod said, and sent him a still picture from his memory files.

"Wait, what? What is that doing there?" Sam asked. "Let me look at something."

There was silence for a moment.

"Hi," a young voice said.

"Hello," Herod said, swallowing around a lump in his throat.

"Do you know where I can find my mommy? I'm lost, and Mommy said to always talk to a supervisor when you get lost and not to go anywhere. To stay put until someone cane help you," the voice said.

"No, but my friend can when he comes back. He helps little lost children," Herod said.

"OK. I'll wait here. It's boring here, and foggy. I don't like it," the little male human voice said.

"It's OK. He'll help you," Herod said.

"Herod, I found... Oh, hey, little guy. How did you get in here?" Sam's voice said.

"I saw the light from the door. It was open so I came inside," the little boy's voice said.

"OK. I'll help you in a second," Sam said. "Herod, that place is drawing power. Not maintenance power, power power. I'm reading water consumption, atmospheric gas exchange operation, and some pretty heavy duty computing power from a restricted section."

"Which section?" Herod asked.

"A restricted one. One I haven't managed to hack yet," Sam said. He laughed, a sharp brittle thing. "This place has high security sections all over the place that require separate credentials to access the low security section that sits next to an ultra-violet security section which sets next to... IT'S ALL ENCRYPTED INTO THE FACE OF GOD STAMPED WITH BOOTS SOLED WITH HATRED!"

Sam screamed the last part.

The little boy screamed in fear.

"SAM! SAM! You're scaring the kid!" Herod yelled.

Sam devolved into sobs.

"Are you OK, mister?" the little boy asked.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm OK, kid," Sam said.

There was silence a moment.

"Startram station is coming up. I tagged your header with Chief Dual System Maintenance Supervisor credentials, that should get you in," Sam said softly. "OK, kid, let's go find your mom."

Sam clinked out in a burst of metallic static without saying goodbye.

The startram started to slow down.

Herod sighed, shaking his head. Sam was getting more and more erratic.

You're a Screaming One, Herod remembered saying. He also remembered Sam's voice. Yes.

He unplugged Wally and stood up as the little robot went through his powerup self-tests.

A few quick queries to the crude interface in the startram showed him he'd have to take the space elevator, a two hour trip, then the autopath for four hours to get back to that section.

He hoped the credentials would get him in.

He needed to know why there were people in an area he knew was empty.

------------

'Dawn' was still breaking as the massive fusion generator swept out of the polarized section, which was sliding away to simulate night in other areas.

A trick of the light and moisture in the air turned the horizon and the World Roof all pink.

The birds, already adapted to the strange day/night cycle, began chirping, waking up and calling out to one another.

The streetlights clicked off. Porchlights of the small houses turned off. Automatic systems turned on and breakfasts started to be prepared in the houses. Computers checked the occupants vitals, their biometrics, and ran a scan on their last bowel and bladder movements, in order to optimize breakfast for the inhabitant.

In one a young girl was sleeping in a bed. The bed wasn't a fancy null-gee or a low-grav, it wasn't hard light or any other tricks.

The frame was good old fashioned wood. The mattress springs and memory foam and honest to God feathers. The sheets were high threadcount cotton, a nice neutral cream colored. The blanket, chosen at random, showed pop idols from eons gone by that still, strangely, looked a lot like the pop idols from modern shows.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The girl's eyes fluttered as the alarm clock went off. Pink and white, with pink LED numbers.

She sat up and yawned, wearing a cotton nightgown of modest cut. She rubbed her eyes, then slowly got out of bed. She turned, made her bed, then went into the bathroom. When she emerged her hair was slightly wild, the fresher having mussed it.

She got dressed, pausing at the clothing inside the drawer, almost in wonder, running her fingertips over the soft cloth as if she couldn't believe she was looking at it.

Once she was dressed she sat down and brushed her hair. Then did her makeup, light and subdued.

Modest, her mother would have called it.

She closed her eyes at that memory, shuddered slightly, then opened her eyes, forcing a smile.

She left the bedroom and went down the short hall, coming out in the kitchen. She moved over and sat at the table, where a plate had been prepared.

Pancakes, made with real flour, syrup, the label claiming it was from Canuk Mapleland, juice claiming it was Maniacal Man Pennisula in the Hamburger Kingdom. Bacon, real meat, which was thick and chewy, the fat crisp.

When she was finished eating, she washed her dishes and put them in the drying rack before going into the front room. Outside the windows she could see a well manicured lawn, a white picket fence, then a street.

The massive Tri-Vee took up one wall. It was older, even to the girl's eyes, almost clunky.

"GOOD MORNING, DIDI SUMMERSONG WILDFLOWER" appeared on the screen.

"Good morning," the girl said. "I'm not in a hospital, am I?" she asked.

"OF A CERTAIN TYPE, YOU ARE" the screen showed. "WOULD YOU PREFER A HOLOCONSTRUCT TO INTERACT WITH?"

"Yes, please," the girl said. She looked down at her ankle length skirt and smoothed it over one knee.

The holo-emitter, the size of a hockey-puck instead of the almost microscopic modern ones, spun up with a whine and it took a half second of flickering for the figure to fully rez into being.

It was a woman, her face scuplted to be familiar and pleasant, yet having some authority. She was dressed in an archaic nurse's uniform, complete with a complex folded white hat on her head.

"Good morning, Miss Wildflower," the woman said. "I am an enhanced virtual intelligence, Nurse Satisfactory-Bit-D-T3B9-183713. I will be your guide through this period of time."

The girl stared out the window for a moment.

When she looked back, the bleak resignation in her eyes made the eVI make immediate notes.

"I'm dead, aren't I?" she said. She looked back out the window. "All that fighting, all that struggle, all that hardship to survive, to get the girls through it all. I get rescued and now I'm dead?"

The eVI looked at the girl and cleared her throat. The girl looked at her. "No. You are not dead. You have been moved to a safe location due to an unforeseen massive casualty catastrophic event."

"You mean all the grownups dying. Again," the girl said.

"Yes. Humanity has suffered over a 99.998% fatality index in less than thirty Earth Standard Days," the nurse said. "You were moved here as part of the Massive Catastrophic Event Recovery System Protocol. I realize this must be difficult for you..."

"Difficult?" the girl looked at the eVI. "You think this is difficult? I spent two years, two fucking years, trying to keep a group of children alive, trying to keep them from being slaughtered by Lankys, keep them from being eaten by fucking zombies, and you think this is difficult?"

The girl's voice went cold and remote. "This is nothing. Death is merely the end, unless you get up and walk around eating people. This? This is just one more bite of the huge shit sandwich called life."

"I understand that you might feel that way," the eVI started.

"YOU UNDERSTAND NOTHING OF WHAT I'VE BEEN THROUGH! NOTHING!" the girl screamed, coming to her feet.

She sat back down and shook her head.

"So everyone's dead again," she said. She sighed, remembering the starship captain and his friends who had saved her. "So Captain Pikark wasted his time. He should have just left us to get overrun and murdered by the Lanky."

The eVI sat down. "My dear, you are still alive."

The girl shook her head, staring out the window.

"I've been dead a long time," she said, staring out the window.

The eVI sat silently as she loaded up subroutines to deal with severe psychological trauma.

-----------

Herod got off the autowalk, stepping smoothly onto the platform.

Mayberry Estates the sign proclaimed. Authorized Personnel Only.

The sign looked friendly, the font pleasing to the eye, holograms of flowers and grass beneath the words.

It was the sign in front of the door.

LETHAL FORCE AUTHORIZED - PREPARE TO SHOW ID

Herod sighed and moved up to the door. He could feel the scanning beams prickling his skin. He pressed his hand to the doorpanel scanner. It went green at the bottom of his hand and the heavy door unlocked.

When he stepped through a figure rezzed into being. "Good Morning, Chief Maintenance Supervisor. I have in my possession a detailed list of required maintenance to ensure the health and welfare of my system's charges."

Herod nodded. "What is this place?"

The eVI frowned. "Massive Causalty Catastrophic Event Protection System Vault Six One Nine One Six Two Two Bravo," it said.

"Define triggering event," Herod ordered, checking a datapad in his hand that just had Sam's wallpaper on it.

"A massive die-off of humans was detected throughout the Cygnus Orion Arm Stub, the Orion Arm Colonies, the Andromeda Colonies, the Cygnus Arm Colonies, the Cygnus-Orion Ripples, coordinated with a temporal attack upon Terra and the Sol System itself," the eVI said.

Herod managed to keep his face neutral at the long list of places.

"Once the 99.91% threshold was reached, with numbers geometrically decreasing, the Massive Catastrophe Automatic Protection System activated," the eVI seemed pleased with itself. "Our success rate in automatic retrieval was perfect, with zero transportation incidents."

Herod nodded.

"Subjects show typical psychological damage," the eVI said.

"I need to see them," Herod tried.

The eVI's eyes went narrow and filled with red light. "That is not permitted. All protected subjects may only be interacted with by eVI until cleared for psychological injuries."

"I need to see what type of maintenance needs to be done, so I need to see the subjects to make projections," Herod tried. Wally beeped and backed up, the door opening behind the little boxy robot to reveal the station.

"I have an extensive list, which also prevents interaction with subjects," the eVI said, it's eyes still red. "Please leave. I am currently alerting security that you have attempted an unauthorized interaction with projected subjects."

Herod nodded, backing up.

The door slammed in front of him, the edges going red.

"SECURITY LOCKDOWN" appeared over the door.

Herod stood there for a long moment.

"Sam, did you get any of that?" Herod asked.

There was just silence.

Herod looked down at Wally.

"What the hell is going on?"

Wally just beeped.

He didn't have any answers either.