Things Fall Apart: Chapter 45

Zephyr, in wide orbit of TRAPPIST-1, 1.9 megaseconds out from Gliese-581.

Lieutenant Commander Robin Alexander was...not bored. Not quite bored.

Ze understood entirely why ze was on the ship, minding the store while the captain played diplomat, and also why Singer had chosen whom she had to accompany her. So ze was not resentful in any way, although ze did hope ze would get to visit Newer York before Zephyr left the system. Ze had never been, and very much wanted to see the place.

The truth was that there was not a lot for zir to do right now. This was not exactly the first moment of routine operation since the Incident. It was, however, the first such moment that felt like it might become the new normal. The ship was whole and functioning better than expected. The crew were all hale, with two exceptions as of this shift's report from Sick Bay—two minor injuries, one on the job and one in the gym.

Ze was just starting to contemplate how to liven things up—a drill of some sort, perhaps—when the chime requesting access to zir office sounded. Ze hit the control with something very like relief. Even a tedious conversation about someone else's state of mind right now would be diverting.

It was Ensign Cordé, and surprisingly, her face showed that something genuinely interesting might be in the offing. "Ensign? Have a seat."

Cordé took the indicated chair almost absent-mindedly. Yes, Alexander thought, she's found something. Aloud, ze said, "Got something for me?"

"Yes, Commander. I think I might have a smoking gun!"

"Go on!"

"I had been going through the comm buffers saved from Bellerophon, trying to find the moment when we received the trigger message. We wouldn't have been listening for that high-power broadcast—we're monitoring it now, of course, but ordinarily, we'd ignore those frequencies unless we were explicitly acting in place of a relay."

"Right," Alexander said. "We'd figured that the plan was for the big signal to get out to all the Ernestines, and then they would relay the message to ship command channels."

"Exactly," Cordé replied. "But here's the thing. Allowing for the fact that time is relative, everything we've been able to determine so far is that ships and stations were all affected at the exact same moment, plus-or-minus. That includes all the relays."

Alexander thought about that a moment, then said, "So the message itself wasn't the immediate trigger. It was just the setup."

"Exactly. But I have to admit, I didn't really think that through at first. Instead, I was trying to figure out what we had received at the exact moment of the Incident, for us. That included digging into the raw buffer. Now, that level of data isn't really meant to be dragged through very often. We still save it, because data storage is cheap, but it's literally raw signal data, what we call I-slash-Q data. That data should include the big signal meant for the Ernestines. We know what those frequencies are, we know what those messages look like, now."

"So you didn't have to try to drink from the fire hose."

"Right. But here's what's 'fun'!" Alexander could hear the quotes, even though Cordé did not use the ancient hand sign. "There is absolutely nothing on those frequencies."

"Nothing at all?"

"Dead silence. A literal impossibility. Every other frequency, there's at least noise from background radiation. The Ernestine channel? Zero."

"And that's not normal? What I mean is—"

Cordé was clearly excited at this point, as she interrupted her superior without a blush. "It's not. We ignore the signal, but the raw buffer should still record it. What's more, if you go back about thirty megaseconds before the Incident—long before Bellerophon actually left the sphere of relays—we definitely do record background noise on that channel, and the occasional routine message between the relays. Then, suddenly, nothing."

Alexander actually grinned, caught up in the excitement. "'Nothing' has rarely been so suggestive."

"Right? So then, I started looking along a different axis. I asked, 'What might have left even a small trace in either the high-level command logs or the raw buffer at that exact moment, or a little bit before?' Truth is, I didn't expect to find anything. If they're already covering their tracks by either erasing or injecting a filter into the raw buffer, why would they leave any other trace. And I was partly right. Despite every effort, I did not find the actual command the Ernestines probably relayed to us to set things in motion. But what I did find was this!"

Cordé handed Alexander a tablet, on which was a series of digits. Alexander stared at it for a bit, but it was just nonsense numbers.

Then, ze saw it. The digits were all between zero and eight, inclusive. Zir mouth went dry before ze said, "This is nonary code."

"Give the XO a prize! They probably did erase anything we'd recognize as part of Protocol Capel or whatever, but somehow, by accident or design, they left one packet of evidence. We'd have written it off as simple junk if we hadn't started seeding 'safe' Ernestines and had them actually tell us about the big signal, and the occasional nonary inclusions, in the first place."

Alexander nodded, considering implications. "Are we certain there aren't any other stray packets like this?"

"Not yet," Cordé said. "I'm writing an old-fashioned filter program to try to go looking..."

There it was again. The elephant in the room. They had been trusting Chef, Castor, and Pollux this whole time. Now, the last half-meg or so, that felt naive. Where were their blind spots? What were they hardwired to not be able to do?

And how certain could they be that their "friendly" AIs were truly unaffected? What if the effect was just...different? What if the whole point was to set up the survivors for something else?

Alexander expressed none of this out loud, simply saying, "Good thinking, Marina. Thank you. Do we have a secure channel to the embassy and the captain?"

"Yessir. Secure as anything."

Fair point. Still.

"Write this up—the captain of course will probably figure out where you're going with it as soon as you mention the raw buffer—"

"She'd better. She's the one who first trained me on how to spelunk it!"

Another genuine smile from Alexander, despite the lack of discipline displayed. "Exactly. Write up a summary and I'll draft a cover letter for it and we'll send it over. If I'm guessing right, they'll be going into their discussions with the ambassador pretty soon. After that, keep digging! Thank you, Ensign. Dismissed!"

Cordé stood and left, with an eagerness to be about the work even though it would almost certainly be tedious.

When the door had shut behind the communications officer, Alexander closed zir eyes and took a breath. Then, ze said aloud, "Chef?"

"Commander?" His craggy countenance appeared on the screen on zir desk.

"Please review the conversation I just had with Ensign Cordé."

"Got it."

"Were you able to retain all of it?"

If Chef was puzzled by the question, it didn't show in his face or his voice. "Yes I was. But I'm still concerned by something."

"Which is?"

"I feel like I should have thought about delving into the raw buffer from the Bellerophon's logs ages ago."

"You've had a lot on your mind."

"True enough, but...look, Commander, I'm not paid to be dumb. I know you're all uneasy about me and the twins right now. We're uneasy, too. There are things going on that are...existential for us. For all of us."

Alexander didn't know if this made zir feel better, or worse, but ze made a choice. "Chef, you, as much as any other member of this crew, helped us hold the ship together when it was literally coming apart. You and the twins got us home. You're still doing everything we could possibly ask you to do, and more beside. There are implications about what was done to the other AIs, and in Lucas' testimony, which are incredibly disturbing. But I trust you."

Ze stopped there. This was where ze still needed more practice with people, honestly—and Chef was "people" enough for these purposes. Ze was pretty sure more than this would make it sound too belabored. It still felt kind of bare, though.

But Chef seemed to accept it, nodding. "Thank you, Commander! Anything else?"

"A hot chocolate on the pad when you have a micro."

"Coming right up!"

The screen returned to what it had been doing before, and a hot chocolate materialized in the replicator slot behind zir desk a moment later.

Ze sipped pensively, hoping ze had not just perjured zirself.