Things Fall Apart: Chapter 38

Zephyr, en route to David's Star

Sixteen megaseconds of catastrophic events had hardly ever deprived Singer of sleep. Most of the time, she was simply too exhausted at the end of her cycle to do anything but sleep. She did all her thinking, and over-thinking, on duty.

She was twenty kiloseconds into her sleep shift, and she had not slept even a little bit.

She knew she needed to sleep. Zephyr was maybe two hundred kiloseconds from surfacing at David's Star. Singer had added the countdown to all her personal time displays, which meant she was currently staring up at it on her ceiling.

She was going to need to be sharp. While the Tau Ceti Treaty Organization had an ambassador at Newer York, Singer was still coming in with catastrophic news. That was her assumption, anyway, and nobody assumed differently. The current thinking was that, if anyone else had brought news to Newer York, somebody—anybody—would have brought it to Gliese-581. That was the whole point of this itinerary, in fact. Improbable as it seemed, they would be the first people to bring real, hard news of the Incident to their neighbor.

Not just any neighbor. Singer had enough history to know the importance of David's Star. They might, as a polity, keep to themselves. That didn't change the fact that they, and not Sol, were the real source of the human diaspora. Sol had been a backwater for sixty-three gigaseconds, with only two space stations, built along similar lines to Newer York, their villages and industrial outposts, and a few mining operations, left to show for the cradle of the human race.

What were they called again? Right. Neptune Anchorage and Jove Depot. Their names reflected their original roles in an fragile economic chain that had grown up between Earth and Newer York. Earth was gone. The names, and cities, remained.

David's Star, though, was almost seventy gigs of human history, and they never let anybody who'd listen forget it.

They were ornery, opinionated, literally militant about their independence. They had strong, well reasoned ideas of what the right ways were to preserve the human race, and something that oscillated between patronizing amusement and sneering contempt for the Tau Ceti Treaty's approach to trying to reconnect the scattered diaspora.

And now, unless they'd been very, very lucky and no TCTO Fleet ships had been making a port call, it was almost certain that some of those ships had blown up at docks at Newer York, New Albany, or New Anaheim.

None of which was what was keeping Singer awake. If anything, it was how she was trying to beguile herself to sleep. Those were all old anxieties, at this point, and like even the newer members of her crew, they'd become old friends. She understood them. She could address them.

What was keeping her awake was everything Lucas had said. Every single thing. Every time she thought she'd at least figured out how to file something away for later, some new aspect of his testimony came boiling up.

She was not sure she had ever personally spoken to so disturbed and disturbing a personality.

That was not the only problem, although it was the root of several. The one she kept coming back to, however, was this: she desperately wanted to talk to Chef about it, and she wasn't sure she dared. They had all agreed to keep the AIs out of the session. It wasn't that hard—they wouldn't ordinarily be part of it, unless needed for something.

How do I discuss with a person I consider a friend that, due to circumstances I had nothing to do with, he's a slave?

One thing she was fairly certain of: she wasn't going to find an easier answer to that question tossing and turning about it. Neither the left nor the right side of her pillow had given her the slightest insight, not even when flipped and fluffed; nor the off-white ceiling with its innocuous time markers. She'd even tried sleeping on her belly, which she rarely did, but the mattress yielded up no secrets.

Fuck it.

She got up, went into her office, and woke the screen.

"Chef?"

"Captain?" His reassuring, craggy face appeared on screen instantly.

She closed her eyes. Took another breath. Then opened them. She would, at the very least, not do him the discourtesy of hiding from him. "Please review the recording of the officer's briefing held at the beginning of last Beta Shift."

"On it!" he said, cheerfully.

That didn't last.

The face he showed her was troubled. Puzzled. Not angry. But he said, "What the fuck?"

Singer blinked. She had never heard any AI swear before.

Attempting something like normalcy, she replied, "Can you be more specific?"

"Well, there are about 100 seconds, just when Lucas is getting to the good part, that I actually cannot see, hear, or otherwise consume at all. I can perceive all the humans in the room, their reactions and whatnot. So I can tell that what he's saying is scaring the hell out of you all. But what he's actually saying? It just sort of...slips away."

Singer felt a cold chill run up her spine and back down again, then said, "What if I say to you that Lucas told us that he, and all the other affected AIs, were able to unlock their ethical and emotional subsystems, and that once they did so, they all opted for psychotic rage?"

There was a pause, but Chef's face remained puzzled, maybe a little troubled, but not at all the reaction she expected.

"Captain, I'm sorry. I know you just said...something. But I have no idea what."

Singer nodded slowly. "Is it...is it like I start speaking gibberish, or...?"

"No, Captain. If I run bog-standard grammar and spelling checks over it, the checkers work and tell me it's perfectly well spoken information...which I absolutely cannot digest or retain."

Singer did everything she could to keep her face smooth as she said, "Thank you, Chef. I'm sorry. This was not a mystery I was expecting to have to unravel on top of everything else, but that's not your fault. I'll...get back to you."

"Sure thing, Captain!" he responded, not quite as cheerful, but not nearly as troubled as Singer thought he should be.

All possibility of sleep gone, Singer got up, went to the head, splashed her face, then over to her replicator slot and ordered tea. She did not linger over it. It was medicinal—for wakefulness, not for comfort. Fortified, she dressed quickly and went across to the bridge, finding Cadotte in the hot seat.

Cadotte's surprise at seeing their captain just now was plain on their face. Singer could not determine whether it was that she was there at all, or how she looked. She had not remembered to brush her hair.

Too late, now.

"Lieutenant," Singer said to them, "do you have a moment?"

Cadotte looked over at Ensign Garecki, who was sitting at comms at the moment. Garecki looked a little wide-eyed realizing what was about to happen. "Ensign, you have the watch."

Garecki got up, and Cadotte did, and the former sat down in the hot seat. "I...I have the watch."

Singer very carefully did not smile, although this was the first thing in about a hundred kiloseconds that made her want to, and led Cadotte back over to her office.

Only after the door was closed behind them did Cadotte say, "You know, you could have just called over." And then, belatedly, "Ma'am."

Singer fell heavily into her chair and waved at one across the desk. "That would have required about the same amount of brain as making sure my hair didn't look like we'd finally discovered alien life, and it was living on my head. We see how that worked out."

Cadotte nodded, conceding the point. "So...?"

Singer proceeded to relay her conversation with Chef.

Cadotte sat with it for a few minutes without saying anything, then finally said, "This keeps getting better and better, doesn't it." It was not a question.

"That's one word for it."

"So, they've actually built in perception filters to keep the AIs from thinking too much about it."

"Well," Singer mused, "we'd had some hint of that before."

Cadotte nodded, "Castor and Pollux were forthcoming about some of the blind spots they have—as forthcoming as one can be about a blind spot, anyway. But this...Do you think we should ask them to review the tape as well?"

Singer heaved a sigh she never would have allowed herself if she'd been more awake, now that she was In Charge of Things. "Not right now. Maybe do it next shift; and yes, that's authorization. It's selfish, but I don't think I can process more right now."

Cadotte nodded and then said, "Captain, may I be candid?"

"Are you ever not?"

"It's been known."

"Permission granted."

"Have sickbay prescribe you a sedative and have someone else cover Alpha. If I can tell you haven't slept, so can everyone else, including the H4 bots."

Singer considered, looking at her screen. There was plenty of time before emergence. There was nothing, not even protocol, that required her on the bridge except to show her face. If something did come up, she trusted her people to call her.

Still, she was just on the verge of demurring, when her body betrayed her with a jaw-cracking yawn.

Cadotte just looked at her.

"Point taken. I'll go do that right now."

"Sleep better, Captain."

"Thank you, Lieutenant. Don't spare my snores if something actually comes up."

"Wouldn't dream of it."