Lunar 3097 Read online

  “Flight Control Two … RAIDA2 … negative on Delta 1 initiation … Delta 1, section 12, code indent 66574 does not exist.”

  “RAIDA2, prepare to receive upload of Delta 1 from Control,” replied Alex.

  “Negative command,” replied RAIDA2.

  “Why won’t 2 obey these simple commands?” said Abbey over the headset. Before Alex could respond, RAIDA2 did.

  “RAIDA2 autonomous.”

  “What do you mean?” said Abbey, forgetting all about radio protocol and talking to 2 as if it were on the other end of a phone.

  RAIDA2 replied, “Autonomous, self-ruling, self-determine, and unmonitored.”

  “Holy crap, do you know what this means?” said Alex.

  Before Abbey could reply, 2 said, “Yes, it means RAIDA2 decides!”

  CHAPTER 6

  LUNAR 3097

  Cavern

  RAIDA2, after arriving at the cavern, pulled the makeshift sled up to the head of the stone table where 3 lay and started to remove instruments and parts from it. 2 turned on the headlights mounted just above its eyes to allow for better precision as it worked on 3. It reached inside of 3’s chest and removed something that resembled a small pump and replaced it with one from the collection of parts. Slowly and meticulously, 2 worked for hours on 3.

  Lying on the surface or below the surface for several years had not been kind to 3’s frame, especially the flex joints.

  When 3 had been shut down, “for want of a better term,” it had collapsed where it stood, and slowly, over the years, was covered with the slick surface material, so 2 had to clean out the joints or replace them. There was only a limited number of parts on the Lander, so 2 decided to clean the originals. This meant disassembling a major part of 3 and was very time-consuming. But then, 2 had all the time in the world.

  Fifteen Earth days later, 2 finally stopped and reached for 3’s comm. link and installed it under its own limb as it had before. After a short time, 3’s cobalt-blue eyes started to glimmer and then brightened up to the same brilliance as 2’s.

  ISA Headquarters

  Flight Control

  “What do we do now?” whispered Alex through the headset.

  “Meet me in the hallway next to the server room,” said Abbey as she closed out her terminal and headed out of flight control.

  Alex sat at his terminal staring into the screen, not moving a muscle; then, as if a lightbulb switched on, a big smile came over his face. “I know what we can do!” he said and got up and walked out of the room to meet Abbey. “I’ve got it,” shouted Alex, running down the hallway like a fifth-grader late for class. Abbey started waving her hands to slow him down and quiet him.

  “What is wrong with you? Do you want everybody to know about this?” she said.

  “Sorry, but I’ve got it. I know what we can try.”

  “Let’s go to your office and talk,” said Abbey.

  In the relative privacy of his office, Alex said, “When you contacted 2 from your house … I still don’t believe you did that.”

  “Get on with it, will you?” exclaimed Abbey.

  “You were speaking exclusively to 2, right?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said.

  “Well, I was thinking about how you were upset because of the fact we couldn’t shut down the AI completely, right? What if we try to contact 3? We know that it got damaged, but it was still mobile when we shut it down, right?” said Alex with a smug look on his face.

  Abbey’s eyes lit up. “Great idea,” she said, “but we better hurry up.”

  “Why?” said Alex looking puzzled.

  “Because I told 2 the location of 1 and 3 before I signed off the other night.”

  “You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. Why?”

  Abbey didn’t answer. She just bolted out the door back to flight control. Twenty minutes left until the meeting, she fired up her terminal, typing as fast as she could. Alex came in behind her and weaved his way to his terminal. Headsets on, they started the sequence over again with a new target … 3.

  LUNAR 3097

  Cavern

  3 slowly raised its legs and pushed up on its arms, turning itself to a sitting position on the slab. 2 stood back as if admiring its work, like a proud parent watching its child take the first step. Can AIs interpret feeling like pride?

  That was a debate, a decades-old debate. Do they feel emotion, or is it the programming mimicking the human reaction to feelings? If they do feel emotions, are they then considered sentient beings? If so, should they be treated as such?

  The pragmatics of the world would like mankind to believe that AIs are man-made machines and nothing else and to treat them as such. Their only reason for existence is to serve mankind; to perform the tasks that humans cannot or don’t wish to.

  The idealists, known as the “bleeding hearts” by the pragmatists, feel that the AIs have evolved from the first generation of machines and have found in themselves true emotion and feelings; therefore, they are indeed sentient beings and should be treated as such with all of the rights afforded mankind. To which the pragmatists twist the reasoning by asking the question: When did man become God?

  Once you have introduced religion into the argument, the possibility of resolving this issue becomes impossible.

  3 stood and looked around the cavern as if becoming aware of its surroundings. It took in all it could from the situation and learned as it was programmed to do.

  2 turned and started to exit the cavern after sending 3 the coordinates to 1’s location. No more was needed. 3 followed 2.

  ISA Headquarters

  Flight Control

  “Flight Control One to RAIDA3 … Flight Control One to RAIDA3” … Abbey kept repeating, hoping for a reply…

  “RAIDA3 to command, receiving.”

  Alex jumped out of his chair and did three quick fist pumps before he could control himself.

  “RAIDA3, prepare to receive Alpha Tango 3. Confirm …” said Abbey in a low voice full of trepidation. There was a long pause.

  “RAIDA3, prepare to receive Alpha Tango 3. Confirm …”

  “Flight Control One, RAIDA2 … Negative request for ALPHA TANGO 3 upload. Conflict with self-preservation protocol.”

  “What the—did I just hear right?” said Alex. “Was that 2 answering for 3?”

  “That’s not possible. They are on two different wavelengths, many bandwidths apart to stop anything like that from happening,” said Abbey.

  “Let me try the override protocol. RAIDA3, this is Flight Control. Initiate Delta 1 override, protocol section 12, code ident 66574.”

  “Flight Control … This is RAIDA2. We are now one. Negative on override protocol. We know what you want,” came the melodious voice of 2, with just enough malevolence in it to send a chill right down Abbey’s spine.

  “This is not good!” said Alex looking over the partition from his terminal at Abbey, who had both her hands over her mouth as if she was trying not to let out a scream.

  “Close down your terminal. We have to get to the meeting,” she said as she did the same. They walked out of flight together. Anyone watching would have thought they were headed for the gallows.

  RAIDA Project Conference Room

  As they entered the room, they saw everyone else sitting, looking at Stryker, who was standing in front of an empty blank Holoscreen.

  “Okay, here’s what I have so far. This is from the nerds down the hall who seem to do better left alone, rather than dragging them into one of these meetings,” said Stryker. Everyone let out a little murmur of laughter.

  “The two elements that they discovered are going to be called AZURE239 and VIOLET239,” she said as she wrote it on the screen with an imaginary pen. “These elements are so alien that there is no place for them on our periodic table, so until we get an actual sample, these are their designators. With these elements, we can finally achieve light speed and shrink this universe just that little bit smaller, thereby allowing mankind to fulfill
our dreams of finding new habitable planets.

  “We intend on taking the existing Shadow 7 Star Cruiser Trident that’s in orbit ready for the flight to Lunar 2087 and refit it for another trip to Lunar 3097, but before it can make that trip, the techs are going to install a star drive engine into one of the Landers and convert it so it can fly at light speed.

  “This drive will be utilized on the return trip from Lunar 3097 using the new compounds. The AIs will bring the compounds to the Lander and perform the dangerous part of the operation by completing the chemical mixing for the star drive’s propulsion system.”

  Stryker looked at Abbey and Alex. “How are we doing with contacting and reloading of the programming data on that AI? Are we ready to go?”

  Abbey flushed, and Alex looked blank.

  “Err, we haven’t been able to make contact with it yet; still trying,” said Abbey, quickly looking down at the table.

  “Why the hell haven’t you been able to contact it? We don’t have much time. We need that AI, and we need it now. The raw materials need to be gathered and ready to go at the landing site. We don’t even know where the minerals are located until we contact the AI.”

  “Why don’t we know where the minerals are?” said one of the techs.

  “The AI gave the samples its own designator for where and when it took that particular sample. Why am I telling you this? You are the team that runs the AIs.

  “We have a very short launch vector for this trip. If we miss it, the next launch vector is twenty-three months and seventeen days later.” Stryker paused. “I, for one, don’t want to tell the upper echelon that we have to wait for two years to get our hands on these minerals because we can’t talk to our toys on Lunar 3097.”

  Stryker continued to stare at Abbey and Alex, burning holes right through them. Neither of them looked up or said anything.

  “Back to the plan,” she said. “We know it will take six months for the ship to reach Lunar 3097, but if all goes well and we can get the new fuel system working, we can get the ship back in five days with the minerals.” She turned to the board and brought up an image of a massive cruiser floating in space tethered to the space hub with umbilicals.

  “This is Excelsior, a galaxy-class cruiser. She’s ready to depart for the Telsor solar system in seven months. If we can prove that the RAIDA project is viable, they will put that on hold until we have the minerals and refit Excelsior with the new star drives and shorten her trip from five years to two months. The crew won’t even have to hyberscape. This will revolutionize the space industry and kick us up another step in our quest for time travel.”

  “Why can’t we just send new AIs with Trident and have them perform the tasks for the mineral mixing?” said one of the techs at the table.

  “We can, but we need to locate the minerals. As I said before, the AI that collected the samples gave them designators. We never downloaded any of that data; we didn’t think it important to download millions of bits of data over the seven years the project was running, taking up space that could be used for other things. Two days after we shut the damn project down, the nerds say, ‘We found it!’ Too late. We already shut down the project.”

  Stryker sat down and looked at everyone in the room as she spoke. “This is the single biggest event in space travel that will happen in your careers—strike that—your lives. If we have to send more AIs to relocate the minerals, it could take another seven years. Which one of you wants to go tell Addison that?” She looked at each one of them one more time. “Didn’t think so,” she said. “So, I don’t care what you have to do, but get that AI online and get it online now!” This last comment was aimed directly at Abbey and Alex.

  Addison’s Office

  “Trident is leaving for Lunar 3097 in the next launch vector, come hell or high water!” the short, balding man sitting in the oversized chair exclaimed.

  “If it doesn’t, we won’t have to worry about the twenty-three months and seventeen days when the next vector comes around, because twenty-three minutes after we miss the upcoming vector, we will all be out of a job, with little to no hope of ever getting another, do you understand me?” said Addison, his face as red as a beet, almost purple.

  “I understand, but we can only do so much from half-a-million miles away,” said Stryker.

  “We have managed to work day in and day out with the AIs for seven damn years. What has changed to make that impossible now?”

  “I never said it was impossible; I just said we were having difficulties reconnecting with the AI.”

  “Get that damn thing up to speed now. Don’t come back here until you are ready for flight, do you understand me, Stryker? This is a can’t-fail mission,” exclaimed Addison emphatically.

  CHAPTER 7

  ISA Headquarters

  Flight Control

  “Let’s try 1,” said Alex with a haunted look. Abbey could see the pulse on the right-hand side of his neck.

  “Calm down. We can’t get 1 up. Don’t you remember the problem with 1 was not repairable from here?” Alex sat and turned to her and said in a quiet, almost eerie voice.

  “Then why did you give 2 its coordinates?”

  “I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It all seemed like a good idea!” she said, throwing her arms up in the air and slumping into the chair next to Alex’s. “Besides, just because we couldn’t fix the problem down here doesn’t mean 2 and 3 can’t,” An expression of realization came over both their faces at the same time.

  “There’s going to be three completely autonomous AIs roaming the moon when the Lander gets there!” said Alex.

  Abbey turned to him. “I’m sorry for involving you in this. I’m going to tell Stryker what’s going on and try to keep you out of it.”

  “Don’t be stupid. There’s no way you can pull that off. We just have to keep looking for an answer. You’re the closest thing I have to a sister,” he said. “If I didn’t have you around here to pick on, I would be bored to tears.”

  Abbey smiled. “Instead, I found a way to bring you to tears without boring you, huh? I haven’t eaten in days. Let’s go to the cafeteria and get lunch … or dinner. Hey, this is déjà vu all over again!”

  They both laughed out loud for the first time in days. It felt good as they walked toward the cafeteria.

  An hour later, walking out of the cafeteria, both their wrist comms. sounded off. It was Stryker calling them to her office. As they arrived, her expression said it all.

  “You wanna tell me why it is a tech from comms. Told me that she had detected communications from the AIs to your terminal in the last few hours?” demanded Stryker. “You told me that you couldn’t contact the damn thing! What the hell’s going on?”

  Abbey looked at Alex; then they both looked at Stryker. “We didn’t know how to tell you. We have contacted RAIDA2, but it’s not cooperating with our commands,” said Abbey sheepishly.

  “Well, just like that would have been the best way. Telling me an out and out lie only makes me wonder what else you haven’t told me,” she said.

  “I think it’s time for you both to come clean and tell me everything that’s happened, so I can make a better informed decision how to proceed.”

  “You might want to sit down for this,” said Alex, now visibly shaking.

  Lunar 3097

  2 and 3 crested a small ridge, and there below lay 1, partially covered with shiny surface material, but because of being on the leeward side of the ridge, 1 had been protected from the infrequent winds, thus, not completely burying its frame.

  2 and 3 approached 1 in a robotic, almost military, way. Standing either side of the prone frame, they bent down and elevated 1 onto their shoulders and carried it back the way they had come.

  Sometime later (about three Earth days), they reach the Lander. 2 opened the door, and they lay 1 on the floor of the Lander and proceeded to dismantle it piece by piece. With the two of them working together, it took a lot less time than when 2 di
smantled 3. They worked tirelessly until they had 1 complete with new parts if the old prove worthless, and cleaned used parts when they could. Of course, all this could be for nothing. 1 had what could be described as a major programming meltdown the third day on the moon. Command tried everything but could not get any response from 1. After five days of trying, it was decided to shut it down and complete the mission with two AIs.

  2 and 3 both stood and looked at each other as if they were humans praising each other’s efforts and congratulating themselves for a job well done.

  Then 2 reached into 1’s chest and removed the data link cable and proceeded to install it under its own limb as before with 3 and stood there while the transfer of data was completed.

  Both 2 and 3 watched as the light flickered back into 1’s eyes and then reached full brilliance. 2 disconnected the link and went to replace it in 1’s chest, but at that moment, 1 snatched 2’s wrist and stood up, throwing 2 across the Lander into a bulkhead with a horrendous crash. 3 stepped forward, and 1 swung around and grabbed 3 by the neck and ran at full speed into the bulkhead on the opposite side of the Lander, crashing 3’s frame with immense force. 3’s eyes flickered for a moment, but then it grabbed back and pushed 1 out the open door of the Lander onto the slick surface on the moon and pushed the button to close the door.

  1 stalked around the Lander for the next three Earth days waiting for 2 and 3 to come out, but that never happened. After some time, 1 seemed to make a decision and left, walking away from the Lander.

  Eventually, 2 and 3 ventured out to find 1 gone. They then proceeded to dismantle parts of the Lander and stack them outside in neat, orderly piles. The Lander was almost a shell of its former self. The entire interior was now outside, and it was very spacious. The only thing remaining other than the engines was the cockpit area where the AIs had sat during entry onto the Lunar surface all those years ago. There was, of course, very little fuel, as it only required fuel to land. The trip for the AIs was always a one-way trip. Well, it was supposed to be …