Chapter 5

5-----------------------

Lieutenant Ian Troy walked the hall from the landing bays to sickbay rolling a small oxygen tank behind him. The medics insisted that he wear the mask even after the long trip back until the doctors back on Callisto cleared him. He felt a lot better now since they pried him out of his fighter. The carbon monoxide had made him delirious; a few minutes longer and they would have pried a vegetable or a corpse out of that cockpit.

A few other pilots weren’t as lucky as he'd been: Hustler and Magic Man were dead. Slider got away from it all with a broken arm, the crazy bastard. Frenchy and Too Easy had to bail out and were following Ian into the room, dragging identical tanks. Long Tall Sally was listed as MIA for now, but Ian had grim thoughts that was only because they hadn’t found any pieces of her or her ship to positively identify.

Frenchy jogged a little to catch up with him, motioning to the medics pushing gurneys ahead of them. She tossed her head to get her coppery hair out of her eyes. She was the kind of woman who appeared to spend an inordinate amount of time grooming her hair just so she can flick it out of her eyes every eight seconds. “You think Prince John’s gonna be okay?”

“Not really,” Pinball told her, “I mean they’ll patch him up, but the guy was about thirty feet away when Sally bought it. It happened right in front of him. It really spooked him, I think. You okay, Casey?”

Too Easy mumbled something affirmative through his mask. They called him that because his parents had already cursed him with the name Justin Casey. Making fun of that just seemed like a cheap shot.

“Who you think they’ll put in charge of the Cavs?” Frenchy persisted. “It’s gotta be you, right? Or Kemosabe, I guess.”

“Not right now, Marie. She’s hardly been dead six hours.” Pinball liked Lt. Sacchetta—they even flirted back and forth a little in case things go stone cold in their love lives and they feel like a mutual-pity jump—but she lacked that tactful inner-voice that stops people from asking one another how much they weigh.

“Ohh,” she nods sagely, as if picking up a clue, “you two were…”

“No!”

“Never?”

“Frenchy!”

“Okay, I just thought. Sorry.” They walked in silence for a time until Frenchy tried to cheer him up. “I think Ringer will put you in charge. You’ve been here longest.”

Ian now realized why Too Easy has that oxygen mask clamped onto his face: to keep from having to talk to Frenchy. Smart kid.

“I think—“ Marie’s voice broke, and Ian turned to see that she’d started crying. He pulled her aside and waved for Too Easy to get lost so that they could be alone. “I’m sorry,” she squeaked, trying not to blubber. Looked like she’d spent a while keeping it all bottled inside and it had finally boiled over. “But Ken’s dead and Sally’s dead, and I keep thinking of them and...I’m sorry.”

Now Ian felt like shit for speaking to her so harshly, and a guy would have to be made of stone to walk away from her now, as miserable as she looked. She plowed into him with a tight embrace and stuck like Velcro. He didn't mind being stuck to a pretty girl, but after 5 hours in a space suit and enclosed in a tin can, they were both smelling pretty ripe. After a minute Frenchy realized that Ian’s armpit was a poor tradeoff for the oxygen mask and stepped away from him.

“Let’s go see Prince John,” Ian nodded down the hall. “I think you two should talk it over. Maybe you can help each other out. Emotionally, whatever. I’m not very good at...uh…”

“You helped John out there. I heard you. That was great.”

“I wasn’t even thinking then. I don’t even remember what I said.”

“It was great.” Marie scrubbed the back of her finger under her eyes and looked up at him just long enough for the whole thing to descend into an awkward silence. The chivalrous thing to do was probably to fake spontaneous explosive appendicitis and get away from the situation. The smart thing to do was probably to drag her into a supply closet and bone her silly.

A rolling equipment cart clanged into their oxygen tanks, pulling the two of them into each other by the attached masks. Frenchy’s forehead smacked into Ian’s chin, and together they stumbled into sickbay apologizing to each other and the team of engineers whose cart they accidentally capsized. Not the best solution to his moral dilemma, but he’d take it.

It was a full house; populated mostly by injured civilians from the transports. The room had been cordoned off into triage areas, leaving a central aisle for medics to wheel in priority patients and DOAs. Most of them were the bodies of Marines covered completely in blankets, taken to a room in the back out of everyone’s way. Marie cl;ung to him like glue and sat by him as the nurses deemed them both low-priority, pointed out where the head was, and injected them both with anti-radiation drugs. All thoughts of quick, smelly sex were purged from their minds soon after. The stuff was ipecac’s little brother, making them both feel like professional boxers were machine-gun punching their stomachs like speed bags.

Ian felt somehow that he’s been tricked as he held Frenchy’s hair back while she pukedinto the john. This had gone from potential guilt-free sex to a rather disconcerting level of intimacy. They’ve seen each other barf. Ordinarily Ian would never let a relationship get that far unless he intended to marry the chick. Everything was screwed up now. He’d seen too much.

They wobbled out of there feeling wrung-out. “When did I have carrots?” Frenchy mused, bleary-eyed.

“Lieutenant Troy!” someone called.

Ian stood up and followed the call, promising Frenchy that he’d check on Prince John. A nurse pointed him into a treatment room down the hall and went back to work filling out paperwork. When he got there, the room looked like a mixture between an operating room and a microelectronics workshop. There were a lot of people in here, ranging from civilian to military. One was clearly a lawyer, judging from the ash-colored suit and black leather briefcase. They were all circled around a young woman sitting on the examination table in the middle of the room, half-naked and arguing with the doctors.

Ian stared from the doorway at the woman. Her body was an unsettling canvas of scars, old burns and permanent bruises. She was too muscular to be considered beautiful in the traditional sense. Not even in a bodybuilding magazine sense. She looked lean and tough like expired beef jerky. The story of violence told by the old injuries on her skin, particularly a disgusting waxy white/purple stretch of scar tissue stretching from her neck down one shoulder, made Ian wither. She looked harder than a coffin nail. Nero’s ponytail of muddy blond hair covered the worst of the scarring on her neck. The crest of the U.S.S.M.C. was tattooed on her right bicep.

Her face might have been pretty if her normal expression wasn’t an angry one. Ian thought at first that she must have received some terrible news, or was in trouble, but nobody was really paying much attention to her. She was simply getting dressed. The corners of her mouth were turned downward, her eyebrows encroaching down over her wide, round hazel eyes in a V-shape. It gave her a perpetual scowl that made Ian instinctively dislike her.

But Ian’s gaze was drawn more to the metallic implants studded across her body. He’d only heard about the sheer amount of physical augmentation that space marines received, but this was the first time he’d ever seen it. There was little call for cybernetic implants in his branch of the military, although he’d heard rumors of potential expansion of the TargetLink program to the Space Forces.

“Lay down, Nero,” insisted a Marine major. Probably Major Sylvia from his accent. Lt. Colonel Andre “Ringer” Roma stood near the wall behind him, having a discreet conversation with Major Hansford.

“I’m fine,” the woman snapped, although she complied with the order.

“No, you’re not,” said Doctor Li, whom Ian recognized. “Your blood sugar is shot and I’m still not satisfied with the strength in your neck and left arm. Major, when I said she was cleared for duty, I thought you were going to have her work security in the galleria. I had no idea you were going to send her out to get shot at six hours out of cryo.”

“Then you shouldn’t have cleared her,” Sylvia replied coldly. “Because I don’t have to keep you informed of jack shit when it comes to my operations. Now what’s wrong with her neck?”

“In broad medical terms,” Nero said, her eyes narrowing with distaste at Sylvia, “It’s a pile of crap. Napalm burns and shrapnel almost tore my head off my first year serving.”

“She’s suffered so much tissue and nerve damage that almost everything, including much of her upper spine has been surgically replaced. It’s so extensive that I couldn’t believe she can turn her head without passing out. That is, until I saw this,” Li said, pointing to the back of her neck. Just under her interface jack was a tumor-like lump attached to her spine.

“It’s a pain filter,” Li explained. “And I don’t know who the hell approved this, but if you look at the threshold this thing is set to, I could cut her hand off with a bone saw and she wouldn’t feel it. Do I have to tell you how dangerous that is? Not feeling any pain in combat situations? This woman ought to be in a leper colony!”

“It just takes the edge off the pain in my neck,” said Nero. “I can feel pain. And I’ll pass whatever physical you want me to take.”

Major Sylvia laughed despite himself. “I bet you will. And you will have to. I don’t need a cripple, and if the doctor says you’re a liability in any way I’d jump at the chance to send you home. You’re hardly a trade-up for Anthony Decker.”

“Yes sir.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little unfair to Miss Nero,” asked an unathletic bookish type wearing a polo shirt with the Synapse Corporation’s logo over the pocket. “She did save our lives.”

“Yes, absolutely,” agreed an older man in a tailored business suit. The cufflinks alone cost more than Ian made in five years. “Saras showed us the entire engagement on our monitors. If she insists that she’s all right—“

“Mr. Avery,” Major Sylvia interrupted. He tried to smile but the expression looked alien to him. “With respect, if she’s a danger to herself or others because of her medical condition than I can’t in good conscience send her out to fight.”

“Yes, of course,” Avery agreed, “But she looked quite capable from my vantage. Sixteen confirmed kills? Remarkable.”

Sylvia got flustered and looked about to tell the businessman to mind his own damn business when he noticed Ian out of the corner of his eye. “There you are. Lieutenant Troy, get in here.”

Pinball closed the door behind him and saluted. Ringer noticed Ian walk in and joined the others. “Lieutenant, Major Hansford was just telling me the details of the mission. Good job out there. Good job.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I thought you should be here in Captain Hart’s place. I’ve spoken with the major and he agrees. I’m making you squadron leader for now. I’ll need to see you in my office once we’re done here.”

“Yes sir.”

Ringer motioned to the old gentleman, Mr. Avery. He had eyes the color of flint and a deceptively youthful face for a man probably over the age of seventy. When people said that men age gracefully, Avery was the type of man they had in mind. His white hair was thinning uniformly, swept back neatly with not a hair out of place. His smile was intimidating in a way that made Ian feel like a Morlok socially in comparison. When this guy grinned, toothpaste shares went up.

“This is Bruce Avery, founder and president of the Synapse Corporation,” said Colonel Roma. Motioning to the man with the briefcase, “That’s Dick Wagner, his attorney.”

“It’s a pleasure, Lieutenant…Troy, was it?” Avery took Ian’s hand and crushed it with a two-fisted handshake. “I understand that we have both you and Corporal Nero to thank for our safe arrival here.”

Nero stage-whispered, “Too bad about the people on the transports that got sacrificed for no reason to bring ya here, huh?”

Almost everyone in the room simultaneously wheeled around to tell her to shut up, but Avery shouted over them. “No no, she’s right. The deaths of your pilots and Marines, as well as all of the people on the transports is tragic. The details of the operation were worked out with General Clayton. It’s a matter of colonial security, you understand. Even Colonel Roma wasn’t privy to all the details. The safety of Synapse-1 was of supreme importance, as you’ll see momentarily.”

“You’ll understand,” said the lawyer as he withdrew a small computer terminal from his suitcase, “that the existence of this system should still remain a secret until we can give the station’s staff and residents an orientation seminar. Probably a town-hall type of forum to answer their questions in a controlled environment.” Wagner worked with the keyboard. “The full integration of the system should take about a week, during which time we’ll expect your discretion.”

“I’ve already given my people strict orders to keep their mouths shut about it, Mr. Avery,” said Sylvia.

“About what?” Pinball felt like he’s the only one who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

“The Saras Project,” Avery replied. “A quantum computer that represents the culmination of decades of research and development into the field of artificial intelligence and information theory.”

“Artificial intelligence? Is that even possible?”

“It’s possible, but its existence is difficult to prove,” came a voice from the computer. “The very definition of sentience is subjective. The concepts of self-awareness, adaptability, creativity—“

Nero jumped from the table to the floor, buttoning her pants up. “How many movies we seen that started this way?” Everyone looked at her uncomfortably, hesitant to agree with her. “Well it makes sense, doesn’t it? Why do we need one anyway?”

“Your concerns are well-understood, considering the sensationalist trend in your entertainment media. I am programmed with a number of behavioral laws that govern my actions, adapted loosely from Aasimov’s Laws of Robotics. These guidelines prevent me from taking any action that would willfully or negligently result in harm befalling human beings or that would compromise their safety. I cannot be ordered to countermand these basic laws, nor can they be overwritten by any external force. Any attempt to do so will result in my complete and irrevocable shutdown.”

“This leads to certain other subjective ethical questions, such as what constitutes ‘harm’ on a human being. I am, of course, incapable of causing direct injury, and my ethical guidelines are designed to exacting detail.”

Mr. Avery patted the computer on the head like a pet that has just performed a trick. “And Saras will not be connected in any way to station systems such as power, environment control, or communications. Her function at the moment is information processing. She can’t cause anyone any harm on this station, even accidentally. It’s quite safe.”

“Sisyphus-1 is meant to be a live implementation on a limited scale,” Wagner continued. “It’s meant as a test of its multitasking and communications ability at this early stage.”

“Is that why there’s so much work going on around the base?” asked Nero.

“Cameras and microphones,” Wagner nodded. “A ubiquitous system that will allow Saras the ability to monitor and communicate with personnel anywhere on the station. Among other things. It’s primarily a productivity measure for the science staff.”

“What does ‘ubiquitous’ mean?” groaned Nero, who seemed to have a nagging headache from the way she rolls her head.

“Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time; omnipresent.”

“Great. If nothing else I can use this thing to look up big words for me.” Nero threw her shirt on.

Colonel Roma turned to face Ian. “Pinball, over the next week or so you’ll be flying a ship to collect practical flight data. We’re hoping that we can train it to operate the Switchboard in the future. Shouldn’t be too hard; a lot of it is automated already.”

“You’re going to let it run the Switchboard?”

“Sure? Why not? We know it’s a kickass disc-jockey.” But everybody ignored Nero who seems to be dead-set on being a smartass.

Mr. Avery nodded eagerly. “Your Switchboard is actually quite a simple application for Saras. It’s capable of solving much more complicated problems in the NP-Hard domain quickly. Ideally suited for cryptanalysis.”

“How is that possible?” asked Major Hansford. “I don’t know much about computers but…you said something about this being a quantum computer? What does that mean?”

The computer nerd standing in the back jumped at the chance to explain digital stuff. “Well, it’s quite hard to explain simply, but really the quantum mechanics are only a small part of—“

Wagner cut him off. “—of a large proprietary system. I’m afraid we can’t make the details available because of copyrights and pending patents. We have to maintain an untainted market share. You understand.” He started to close up his briefcase after placing the portable computer terminal back inside. “We’ll keep you posted.”