The Disturbance 2: The Answer: Hard Science Fiction, page 3
“Are you coming?” asked Aaron. “We still have to check out two intermediate shafts and the C space.”
Was Aaron plagued by these thoughts too? It was weird that they never talked about it. They simply continued to behave the way they always had – as if they were the humans they had believed themselves to be for so long. David blindly felt behind him with his feet. The space was clear, so he used his arms to push himself out of the narrow shaft that joined this chamber to the service shaft. He crawled back a few meters.
“Wait, I’ll help you,” said Aaron.
The end of the shaft was a little tricky, because it branched. He needed to get into the lower section. Aaron helped him get his legs into the right place, then pulled him out.
“Thanks,” said David. “What now?”
Aaron pointed ahead. “Space C is only a few meters away.”
“The converter’s functioning,” said Aaron.
His voice sounded muffled. The intermediate shaft he was jammed into was pretty tight. David was glad it was his crewmate’s turn. He accessed the circuit diagram. The converter, which they suspected was the cause of the sensor failure, was marked in yellow. This meant it had significantly outlasted its expected lifespan. Shepherd-1 was officially constructed for a thirty-year mission, but unofficially only for twenty years. So several components had been highlighted in yellow for some time now.
“Swap it out anyway,” said David.
The proximity sensors were important. The ship and its crew needed to know what was happening in their immediate vicinity. They couldn’t replace all overdue components in the ship, but they needed to keep the critical infrastructure up to date.
“According to inventory, we only have two replacements,” said Aaron.
“We’ll have to start recycling replacement parts,” said David.
“OK. Give me three minutes.”
David heard a clatter, then a ratcheting sound. Then there was a hiss and he smelled charred rubber – and burned flesh.
“Everything all right, Aaron?”
“Yeah, almost done.”
David looked at the time. They had been working on the problem for three hours. Christine would be up soon and his shift would end.
“OK, that’s it,” said Aaron. “Pull me out?”
The shaft was so narrow that Aaron had to hold his arms out in front of his body. He had brought a cable with him to help him get out. David used it to slowly pull him out, while Aaron quietly panted and grunted.
Once his crew mate was floating beside him again, David dusted the filth off his blue mechanic’s coverall. Two dark stains wouldn’t budge. Aaron rubbed them, also without success. Then he reached into a pocket and handed David the converter. The module was a little rusted, but otherwise didn’t look bad. David was sure it could be refurbished. He pocketed it and removed the yellow marking from the diagram in his head.
He checked the time again. His shift ended in fifty minutes.
“What next?” asked Aaron.
David shrugged. “The fault has to be in the sensors themselves.”
“They’re outside.”
“I know. My shift...”
“Come on, Dave. We can’t stop halfway through.”
Before they could go outside, they had to get into their space suits. Their bodies could withstand the cold and the vacuum without protection, but it wore them out faster. They weren’t robots, just androids. Their intentional similarity to humans was their weakness.
“Fine,” he said.
They helped each other into the suits in the main airlock. The airlock was spacious – even a Sheep probe could fit inside it. They had overhauled all the probes and updated them according to Christine’s plan. The improved optics now used a special interference technology to increase the resolution five-fold. That meant they needed fewer Sheep probes, and could get closer to glimpsing the beginning of the universe. Christine had come up with the idea a few months back – Christine of all people, who had gone to such lengths to prevent humanity from finding out the answer to the biggest question of all. She still hadn’t explained to them the reason for her renewed curiosity, despite their persistent questions.
“Ready?” asked Aaron.
David checked the status displays. He gave Aaron the OK hand signal used by divers. Aaron pressed the button to open the airlock. David grasped a strut to steady himself. The door slid aside, squeaking loudly at first, then increasingly quietly. The air rushing out dragged his legs out from under him, but David held on.
The airlock was open. Now David really felt like a diver. The universe lay below him like the surface of a mysterious, impenetrable black lake – his eyes had not yet adjusted. He only had to push off and he would plunge into its depths. The thought was tempting. Why not? He would become his own celestial body. Aaron seemed to guess what he was thinking and threw him a tether. It hadn’t yet crossed David’s mind to use it. Maybe Aaron was having similar thoughts. They were the same species, after all.
He clipped the tether to his suit but not the wall. Then he jumped.
“Dave! Don’t screw around!” Aaron yelled over the helmet radio. “The line!”
David had aimed for the edge of the hatch. His jump was perfectly calculated. He sailed past it within easy reach to clip the tether to the lug provided. The satisfying click was transferred through his hand into his head. Or maybe he was just imagining it.
David allowed himself to be carried out into space as far as the tether permitted. The effect wasn’t quite what he expected. He had imagined himself diving into an opaque ocean. But his eyes adjusted to the darkness too quickly, and hundreds and then thousands of points of light appeared on the black blanket.
Aaron was right, he should quit messing around. David pulled himself back to the ship with the line, where Aaron was waiting for him. David put an arm around Aaron, who grinned.
“You’re still the same zany navy pilot, right, Dave?”
David nodded. Yes, he couldn’t deny the personality his creator had given him. It was a shame he would never meet the original. The human David Martelle must be long dead now. Did that make him the original?
“Come on, Dave,” said Aaron. “We got a job to do.”
It actually shouldn’t be that difficult floating weightlessly across the hull of the ship’s central module. But in reality, the radiators were constantly in their way. It wasn’t easy getting rid of excess heat in space. So the ship’s hull was covered in huge radiators. David pushed himself away from the surface to view the labyrinth from above. The radiators were arranged so that they didn’t project heat onto one another, so the arrangement appeared chaotic at first glance. The radar and optical sensors were on the opposite side of the Shepherd’s ovoid central module. But the infrared sensors were on the ring, to avoid interference from the radiators.
David sighed. “It’s a long way,” he said.
“You’re the one who didn’t want to use the exosuits,” said Aaron.
The exosuits were much stiffer and functioned like tiny spaceships, with their own thrusters. They could have used those to take a direct route through empty space instead of clambering through this labyrinth on the hull.
“I hate those things,” said David. “I always feel anxious around them.”
“Just send me the video,” said Aaron.
David switched on his helmet camera and transmitted the recording via radio to Aaron’s suit. Then he looked at the surface in front of him.
“Thanks,” said Aaron after half a minute. “I’ve worked out a route.”
David pulled himself down on his safety line. Aaron pointed to a space between two radiators standing back-to-back.
“That way,” he said, taking the lead.
David followed him. The hull was definitely not designed for leisurely walks. It would have been easier to check the sensors in an exosuit. But those suits gave David a feeling of separation, which interfered with the diagnostics. So it was his own fault he had to squeeze through narrow gaps. Oh well, at least it made a change from the daily monotony. And he could shorten his mandatory training session later.
“We’re here,” said Aaron.
David floated around him. There was an empty surface in front of them. At barely four meters across, it almost looked flat. There was a dish at its center, the long-range antenna. Several other instruments were grouped around it like schoolchildren listening to a teacher.
David pictured himself with his school friends. Another fake memory. Maybe he should clear them out. Delete everything that didn’t belong to him. What would be left?
Aaron pointed at a sphere that reflected the light of their helmet lamps.
“That’s the radar,” he said.
“I figured that was our prize, our reward,” said David.
“Huh?”
“You know, the golden ball, the treasure...”
Aaron twirled his finger beside his head. “You’re welcome to open it. It’s on our agenda anyway.”
David approached the sphere. Its exterior was intact. But that was to be expected. The radar was obviously still functioning. He reached around the sphere until his fingers felt a snap closure. He opened it and tilted back the top half of the sphere. David reached inside it. He connected the index and ring fingers of the suit with the inspection port and launched the testing protocol. Notifications scrolled across his field of view. They all asserted that there was no fault. That was pretty much what he expected. So what was the source of the problem? He closed the sphere again.
Aaron had moved over to another device and was bent over it. David joined him.
“The short-range optic imaging system is working perfectly too,” said Aaron.
“That means we still have to go to the ring,” said David.
“Did you think we wouldn’t?”
David shook his head. “Nope.”
Getting to the infrared telescope was easier once they reached one of the spokes. But only up to a certain point. The farther out David climbed, the more the force of inertia pulled him back. The ring was still spinning, even after being damaged by the explosion triggered by Christine. They had discussed at length whether they should stop its rotation, but concluded that their human-like hardware probably benefited from the artificial gravity.
He was now using the tether routinely. The urge to tumble out into space had dissipated. He now only felt it occasionally, and he knew he would regret acting on it almost instantly. The rotating ring would give him additional acceleration, meaning Aaron couldn’t rescue him even if he tried.
About halfway out, David paused. He looked at the ring. There, that gaping hole – it reminded him of finding Christine’s corpse. It was one of the worst moments of his life – worse than learning of the death of his best friend. Wait. That wasn’t his life. Christine was part of his biography. The human David Martelle’s friend had nothing to do with him. He really should start culling those memories.
David activated his helmet camera. The recordings he was making now were real. If he played them back and compared his reactions to them with his reactions to other memories, maybe he could develop a technique for removing false, implanted content from his mind in a single procedure.
“What are you doing?” asked Aaron.
Aaron was worried about him. But there was no reason to be.
“I’m doing a bit of photography. The light is so beautiful right now.”
“You’re nuts, Dave.”
“Yeah, maybe I am.”
He switched off the camera and continued the climb.
“Let’s go in through the airlock and cover the remaining distance on the inside,” said David.
They had reached one of the small airlocks in the ring. He was glad they had repaired them all. It had taken immense effort. But it meant they didn’t have to climb around the outside of the ring.
“It’s not worth it,” said Aaron. “The infrared telescope is mounted just before the next airlock.”
“Yeah, so we’ll exit through that and go back a few meters,” said David.
He suddenly had a strong urge to remove his helmet. He didn’t actually need to breathe.
“But using the airlocks twice costs time and resources,” Aaron argued.
“As if we don’t have enough of both! Standing here discussing it is using up oxygen too.”
“Fine, we’ll do it your way.”
Aaron pushed off and sailed over to the airlock button. The ring airlocks could only fit one person at a time. David let Aaron go first. The outer hatch opened again surprisingly fast. He guessed Aaron hadn’t waited for the air pressure to normalize. David climbed into the dark hole. When he tried to pull his leg in after him, he suddenly couldn’t, as if someone was holding it. David turned around. It must be caught on something. But he couldn’t see anything. He wiggled his foot and suddenly his leg was free again. He pulled it into the airlock. The outer hatch closed quickly.
“Took you long enough,” said Aaron.
“Sorry, I was a bit... confused just now.”
David took off his helmet. The air in the ring smelled pleasantly fresh.
“You’re really pale,” said Aaron.
“Guess I haven’t been getting enough sun lately,” said David, and Aaron laughed.
The infrared telescope wasn’t the cause of the strange error either. David had suspected as much from the start, but a systematic investigation required the elimination of all possible causes.
Aaron replaced the shielding on the device, which they had removed for the inspection.
“Are you disappointed?” he asked.
“No, this is interesting,” replied David. “It would have been too easy if one of the sensors was faulty. I mean, we saw something that wasn’t there.”
“That’s not inconceivable. It could have been some kind of echo. Say, a beam of light hitting one of the radiators, being deflected and showing up on the infrared telescope.”
“I suppose it could have been something like that,” said David.
“Yeah, unfortunately we can’t rule it out – unless the error happens again.”
“In which case this whole search was for nothing.”
“At least it made a change from the daily grind. But that’s enough for today.”
Aaron straightened up and put away the tool. David went ahead until he reached the inner side of the ring. He could see the central module some distance away. Its main airlock was facing him. From this perspective, it looked like the ship was poised motionless in space.
“Should we jump?” asked David. “We could open the main airlock remotely. That would save us climbing all the way back.”
“We wouldn’t make it,” said Aaron. “Too many different forces. We can’t work them all out in our heads.”
“Maybe we can. Don’t forget, our brains are much more powerful than human ones. We only use a tenth of their capacity.”
“Ha ha, I’ve heard humans say that about themselves,” said Aaron.
“Well, in our case it’s true,” said David.
“Go on then. Calculate your flight path.”
David thought about it. There was the centrifugal force and the Coriolis force. What were the motion equations for those again? He couldn’t remember. He had learned it as a student, but then forgotten. Or rather, the human David Martelle had forgotten, meaning nothing was left of it when it came to the memory transfer. He shook his head.
“I’d have to look it up,” he said. “Maybe we should connect ourselves to the central computer.”
“No thanks, that would be weird,” said Aaron. “It would make me feel like a drone of the ship’s system.”
“It wouldn’t just take control of you,” said David.
“How do you know what it’s capable of once it has access to our capacities? That kind of connection doesn’t go in both directions.”
“You’re crazy.”
“So are you, Dave.”
David stretched out on the bed in his capsule. He was tired. They had figured out how to deactivate this human need, but they hadn’t done so. A period of sleep divided the days nicely, and clearly delineated days were the best way to prevent depression on a voyage lasting hundreds of years.
In the first few years after leaving the Solar System, they had assumed they weren’t capable of experiencing depression. But it wasn’t true. The psyches that had been grafted onto them were no less fragile than those of the humans they were based on. Maybe even more fragile, because they knew that most of their memories weren’t their own.
Christine tried to reassure him by pointing out that the proportion of his memories that were borrowed grew smaller every year. How significant would the first thirty years of his existence be after he had lived 500 years? Very, as David established after the first sixty years.
He now also knew how to address certain images and delete them. But there were too many memories for him to single out and remove the false ones individually. He needed some automated process that wouldn’t delete what he had actually experienced himself. When storing memories, the brain – including his own – unfortunately didn’t orient itself systematically in terms of when and where it recorded something. Sometimes memories even moved to different physical storage locations, or lost their connection to the main index and were then only accessible via incidental cross-referencing.
David separated the helmet from his suit. Then he transferred the recordings to his computer and overlaid the EEG network from the infirmary. He had prepared well. There must be a way to systematically separate his own memories from the fake ones. He watched camera recordings for thirty minutes. He had seen the same images today with his own eyes. Then he cast his mind back to his youth – and hoped his brain would display a different pattern. It obviously wasn’t a particularly well-conceived experiment, but if he found differences here, he could investigate further using more thorough methods.
