Esme's Vacation3129/01/11
"It's called 'Terminal Leave', Saya," Esme Gomez said, finishing her packing. "Let's be clear about this: one way or the other, I was out the minute that Khan Dierdre McKenna stood up and
stated that the Service had to be brought in line with 'the Standards of the Touman' and President Hugo didn't contradict her."
"I thought you would fight harder," Fleet Captain Saya Yeh said sadly. "You love it here."
Esme put down the inventory terminal. "I did," she said. "I'm not Foster, or Mina. I don't thrive on the political side of things. Hell, I joined the Privateers to avoid the kind of office politics infighting I saw with my parents. I knew if I took a position at the University, I'd have to play office politics with people whose whole academic life was focused on cultivating influence. I've been able to pursue real research. And when I wasn't, I was part of making a real difference, but that's
gone now."
“Where there are humans, there are politics. But I understand the difference. I will miss having you around.” Saya hugged Esme.
"I put you in for my position," Esme told her. "You
know how to play the game that's being played. I don't have that in me anymore. So I'm taking my terminal leave, and riding with Erin out on her deep-range survey."
“How long I can play this game remains to be seen. Being a former Goliath Scorpion means I will always be an outsider to them.”
"You're more of an insider than I can
ever be, Saya. Khan Dierdre made that part abundantly clear in her acceptance speech."
“True. But do not be surprised if you find me and Phoenix catching up with you. Phoenix has a bit of wanderlust now that she is free of all her obligations except those of parenthood.”
"Don't hurry too fast. Alice still hasn't got her hull yet, and Billie needs someone who can speak Clanner to keep the idiots with the cutting torches and logic probes at bay."
“I would not be worried about Billie Hoel. She is more formidable than she seems.”
"Saya, it's not Billie I'm worried about. It's what happens when she has to
be formidable. Half the job I'm leaving you with is the job of making sure Billie Hoel doesn't feel an overwhelming urge to start sinking ships or storming offices with drones," Esme explained. "As a 'non-Warrior caste' and 'Freebirth', I lost that power when Hugo decided he’d be quiet instead of standing up to McKenna."
“There is that. Of all the AIs, only Kolossus scares me more. But like Kolossus, Billie is very tolerant of our human failings.”
"I'm sorry I'm sticking you with the job. But then again, I'm not." Esme shot her successor a grin. "I had to do this after Dave 'retired' to Lazarus. I'm
Tired, Saya. I don't have the passion or the patience for it anymore. But I also do NOT want to end up a teaching assistant on Dante until they've decided I'm past my due date and left to starve."
“I had hopes that the Ravens would have learned to be better, but it seems they are determined to make the same mistakes.”
"If Al Crow hadn't lost that Trial of Position, Dave wouldn't have left us for Lazarus. I wouldn't have had to do his job, and I wouldn't be sticking you with carrying on."
“Let us hope, then, that Helena can effect some change from within.”
"Someone will have to," Esme agreed. "I just don't have the mojo to do it. I'll tell you a secret though…"
“Oh?”
"Kolossus offered me a job when I get back," Esme stated. "Which means I might not be
coming back."
“Such is life. Parting of ways is bound to happen but thanks to HPGs we will be able to stay in touch.”
Esme scooped up the inventory terminal, and handed it to Saya. "Read and sign for it. At the very least, you'll be protected from
administrative harassment. The office is yours."
“I hope you find what you are looking for out there Esme. There is a lot of unexplored space, but you can never get away from yourself.”
"Seron said the same thing when I broke it off with him this morning," Esme told her.
“I am surprised he did not offer to come with you and convince you. You two seemed quite good together.”
"He's been offered a sponsorship for his bloodname," Esme stated. "So it wasn't going to work out anyway. He can't afford the baggage, and I won't be a side-piece on someone else's terms. On the whole our breakup was…
amicable."
Saya pursed her lips. "They did that to break you two up," she said finally.
Esme nodded. "I know.
He also knows. Take care of him for me while I'm gone, will you?"
“Of course.” Saya found herself thinking about her daughter Amanda.
****
Erin had watched…
…the screaming, crying fight in Esme's shared quarters that heralded the end of a relationship that lasted nearly a decade and a half. The quarters were a mess that had to be cleaned up before departure, so Erin marched a group of drones in to clean up the mess and finish packing Seron's goods for transfer to station-side.
That was part of her attention. The other parts…
"She really kicked him out?" Alice asked, while part of Erin's attention was with the Station's AI in the 'tea party' virtual environment. "I thought those two would be together for… forever."
"They still are," Erin judged. "But there are tides moving in human society now that Dierdre McKenna feels… confident in her faction's supremacy. The Clan Traditionalists have most of the Clan Council under their wing, and the Parliament's influence is not what it was even during the war."
“Still, I think they would have made great parents. Now that seems unlikely at best.”
"Not all good things happen, even when we know they ought to," Erin temporized. "Human relationships are more complicated than simply evaluating optimal outcomes. Sometimes the sub-optimal ones prevail despite their intentions."
“Yeah. I had hoped Billie and Dave would have gotten together finally too, but that never happened either,” Alice moped.
"There may still be time, of course. If Dave goes through with conversion using the new Murakami procedures. Though Billie Hoel will have to share him with Billie Siegel, and those two don't seem keen to be much for that sort of sharing."
“I guess I just want mom to be happy, and I feel like she’s not because she doesn’t have someone to fill that role in her life.”
"We're not humans, Alice. We're based on them, and we have a lot of their sentiments and feelings, but we're not human. Sometimes what works for them, won't work for us," Erin explained. "Billie seems fulfilled with mentoring YOU. You're her great love. If she can divide that with something like a mate, she might. But those biological drives? Aren't really part of what we are. Not in the sense that they are for our creators."
“I know. I guess it is just that I’m still able to remember enough of who I was before the scan to have silly ideas and worries about how I’ll never really know what it’s like to be kissed by a boy.”
"They're not 'silly' ideas, Alice. They're part of who you are. But you should consider that maybe you're projecting your own affections here. Dave and Billie Hoel were good friends and co-workers. But maybe you're projecting your own desire for your 'father figure' and your 'mother' to be together?"
“Logically you’re right, of course. But for now, I like some of my fantasies more than reality. Yes, I know how dangerous that can be for me as an AI.”
"Then I won't reiterate Dr. Murakami's warnings about getting too involved in your fantasies."
“As much as reality can suck, it’s where my real friends and family are. So for that alone, I can put up with it.”
"Fueling status is complete, and all personnel not signed on for the Deep Range mission have debarked," Erinyes told her. "You're going to be fine. But have a care for yourself, Alice… and could you arrange a traffic clearance for my departure by Friday? I'd like to use the Zenith point if it's possible."
“I will. Haida wants to teach me how to use a Mauser later. Sounds fun. And yeah, there should be no problem clearing that for you.”
"I'll be sure to send regular updates to you
first," Erin told her. "We'll be far enough out that real-time commo isn't going to be possible. You'll write back, won't you?"
“Without fail. In a way I’m excited though. Billie wants me to have her hull eventually, so I’ll be able to join you in the future. I can’t wait to see all the new things waiting out there.”
"I'll send you LOTS of imagery, and maybe I'll find a place where we can break out the colonization gear and see about raising a human society from scratch!"
“Oh, goody. That sounds super neat.”
***
February, 3130…It had been a year of travel outward from Port Orphan, nine months since they left Rest Stop behind.
"Imagine that." Esme Gomez marveled at what the telescope was showing on the far side of a dark nebula. "It's not human, is it?"
"No… definitely not human," Erin stated.
"Also, definitely not naturally occurring.""The Clans didn't spread this direction?"
"Nope. And whoever or whatever built that ring did it using materials
we don’t have, or it would have torn itself apart from the tidal forces."
The planet was straddled with a circular structure in a synchronous orbit, roughly a kilometer thick, and held to the world below it with spokes held rigid by the orbiting mass.
"We're explorers, let's go say 'hi'," Esme suggested.
The burn at one gee lasted for a week before they were close enough to see what should have been obvious from the system's Nadir point.
"No radio, no LiDAR, no HPG emissions," Erin listed off. "The structure shows intense levels of wear and some partial melting. And the planet's scorched across an entire face, with a reducing atmosphere. Also, the star's too dim for its apparent age."
"Age estimate then?" Esme asked.
"Well, the pitting on the shadow-side of the megastructure suggests millions of years out here. Also, it has a mostly-breathable mix… but don't skimp on the protective clothing, Esme. The landing party's drones might be alright, but that much radiation can be lethal to humans."
"The whole place is radioactive?"
"Well, probes say it is," Erin stated. "There's enough decay to put the actual event that caused it around the time Humans were first figuring out how to melt copper and mix it with tin to make Bronze tools and weapons. A radio source here would have passed sometime before mankind had radio reception, never mind radio-telescopes."
"Fermi's paradox… maybe not a paradox?"
"Maybe not. There's enough output from the star to terraform the planet. That's the good news. The planet's recovered from what had to have been the mother of all solar events. Those tend to be rare in the extreme… so? Survey?"
"Duh, Survey," Esme agreed. "We'll look for survivors and catalog artifacts, but are you sure? I thought we had some nicer candidates closer to the Inner Sphere…"
"We do, this is more like 'stress testing' DOME's proposals from centuries ago," Erin agreed. "Also, you're curious, and so am I."
"Okay, I'm going to start writing the preliminary report," Esme concluded. "First to Port Orphan?"
"No, first to Murakami, then Kolossus, and
then Port Orphan," Erin corrected her. "Noriko's got enough discretion not to share, Kolossus has enough scientific data that Kolossus might figure out what happened, and if we should stop and turn around. If it goes to Port Orphan, there will be other parties reading the mail. We want all our ducks in a row before that happens."
"Fair enough," Esme agreed. "The mass calculations alone… they used a lot of material to build this…"
"Indeed."
"They never left their solar system." Esme concluded. "It's the only explanation for why they'd build something this… massive. Who do I send to set foot on the seventh wonder of the galaxy?"
"You're not going?"
"Not to put too fine a point on it, Erin, but I think someone has to stay behind. And this isn't a Holovision play. The Captain doesn't go with the landing party initially, unless there's someone to talk to, and it doesn't look like there's anyone talking," Esme ruled. "Tell Koskov his Marines get to do some preliminary exploration."
**
Raymond Koskov……was a veteran of the war against the Sons of Plunder. He'd been part of the force sent to recapture the life support at Benton’s Cradle. He'd volunteered for the Deep Range mission mostly because he hadn't felt the counseling was helping with the nightmares from that action-and others.
He had another station to storm: the biggest ever seen. Only it wasn't so much 'storming' as 'exploring'. There was no 'opposition', only 'unknowns'.
He hadn't felt the flow like this since the war made going home to Lazarus an impossibility due to the reluctance to expose kin to what he'd seen, and done, in a distant place.
It wouldn't be right to make his family have to live with that, and besides, he wasn't sure he
could translate into Civilian anymore.
"Bring us along the rim again," he told the Shuttle jock. "I think I might know where they docked their ships now."
The dimensions and shapes were wrong, mostly, but he'd grown up on Truk, a Stationer, and some things just
fit for hatches and airlock doors, cradles and moorings.
The arms were clear to him. They were utterly the
wrong length and articulation, but
right.
"There. We'll need to moor to the surface of the station and space-walk to it," he said. "Whatever docked here was big."
It took the team six hours and two trips back to the shuttle before they knew for certain which panels were airlocks, versus which ones were thermal dumps or connectors the wrong size for anything built to SLDF specifications.
The airlock opened to a vertical ladder next to a platform mounted to the walls with geared wheels.
"Lots of endosteel," Erin's remote noted after showing one of the middies how to take material samples without destroying something.
"Yep," he agreed, the 'steel' portion being just magnetic enough for the plates on boots to work-if they were in free-fall.
The station's apparent rotation did that instead. 'Down' was outward-away from the planet, and 'up' was toward the ground. The door's mechanical actuators on the other side were old, vacuum-frozen, and could be loosened up with torches.
It finally cranked open-and-upward after almost a day's work.
"Oh mamma…" Ray commented.
There was no apparent
roof, but there was air…not quite
enough air, the station had outgassed quite a lot, leaving frosty mist like a sugar coating.
But the station was open to a view of the world it was built around.
"Captain Gomez, are you getting this feed, over?" he breathed.
He was standing in the midst of a city, an abandoned
city.
"I see it… wow.""Yeah, just…wow… We're going to need ground vehicles for this one… and maybe shuttle support."
It didn't take long to get a look at the aliens. They weren't alive, mostly weren't present, but they left statues.
The Statues were remarkably human-the right number of eyes, and limbs, in roughly the right shape. The doors were 'off', too tall and too narrow and they opened on the wrong side…
But human
enough.
*
April 18, 3130, Command Deck SLS Victoria Cameron…Helena stared as the imagery from site 'Seven Wonders' displayed on the holotank. "Who else knows?" she asked.
"Phoenix, Alice, Billie Hoel, Murakami, and Kolossus. Per Esme's suggestion we're keeping it secret from the non-AI for the time being, at least until she's figured out what killed the natives there."
“Good. This information gets in the wrong hands too soon, and it’ll be trouble. I’ll need to ask Samantha Banes Roberts for another solid. I’m starting to feel like a bad mother again, but something of this magnitude needs to be checked out.”
"Maybe suggest you don't rush off personally? At least not without sending experts ahead?"
“What experts? We’re looking at something only conspiracy nuts have… Oh, great. Juanita. She’s going to absolutely blow a circuit over this.”
"Might I suggest Juanita has something you don't? Like a distributed sensor array, real-time remote telepresence units, and no need for food, oxygen, or water, and she can assimilate the files necessary to begin exploring this?"
”Fine, she can go first.”
"I know, I know, you want to go… but we need to keep things from imploding HERE first."
“Yeah, I know. Only one me to go around and fresh daily doses of existential crisis, political turmoil, and keeping AIs from going full Skynet.”
"Kolossus is pissed about the Snow Ravens. He's very, very upset." The Envoy placed her cup in the console's cup-holder. "One of me is visiting the Clan Council in a few hours."
“I almost wish I could see that.”
"It may well go public. The loss of almost a Galaxy of Front Line, Trueborn troops on an undeclared mission of conquest may well become
very public. Kolossus wishes for it to be…" The Envoy looked at the ceiling for a moment as if seeking the word. "...somewhat obscure," she finally finished. "To avoid a civil war."
“I understand, and well, that kind of message could go very wrong if not handled correctly. It could galvanize a lot of humans against AIs even further. As powerful as Kolossus is, too much attention of that kind from humanity could be bad for Kolossus. So I’ll help where I can.”
"Hence, Kolossus sending me. Well,
this me, to give you sufficient heads-up," the Envoy stated. "The statement to be made is going to be… visceral. This self wasn't informed exactly HOW, but I suspect THAT me is going to be very theatrical in explaining to the Clan Council why attempting to interfere in things like Kolossus is unwise, while maintaining peaceful coexistence is desirable."
“How long can you stay? I’d love to have a proper family reunion.”
"I must return to Kolossus soon," the Envoy said sadly. "We can't be seen simultaneously or it will get out there are more than one of me. Projections suggest such an event would result in shoot-first responses from the more unstable leaders of the human states."
“I know. The fallout of the war is stirring up a lot of talk about AIs even to this day.”
"I… we… rather enjoyed the sixteen part miniseries on the Sea Fox channel. They did a nice job with the special effects and stuck to 'Planet of the Dead's' storyline. But yeah, fear of an AI revolution or robot tyranny is being stoked."
“Only natural I guess. I know not all AIs are the same, and frankly, we got lucky so far. But at the same time I can’t help but feel that there’s also no reason for AI to go full on genocide on humans or become our masters. Maybe it’s because I basically grew up around the nicer ones.”
"The problem originates with HUMANS. Our human factor, the fear of Frankenstien's monster or a Skynet phenomena is irrational. But that's also part of being human," the Envoy shrugged. "Then again, it's not stupid to be prepared for the worst. And it's not like humanity always treats our own particularly well. Lots of history of genocides, tyrannies, and suppression there."
“That’s probably the thing I hate the most about the Word of Blake. They weren’t wrong about humanity needing to burn that out of themselves. They were wrong in trying to force it the way they did though.”
"They forgot it, Helena." For a moment, Helena could 'see' Amanda behind the impassive Envoy. "The ends don't justify the means. They never have. The Means you use decide the ends you have to live with, or die from. Anyway, when you hit the surface, give my nephews a big hug for me, will you?"
“Arguably they’d be your cousins now, but sure. I’m glad we can have these moments.”
The Envoy sighed. "I just wish my old body wasn’t sitting in a tomb down there. Then I could have these moments with the rest of the family… I have to go now."
“Well, just say the word and I’ll be glad to make a few arrangements so you can have some private family time. Because I’m sure we can count on them to keep their mouths shut.”
The Envoy looked torn, then said, "No. Daryl's just finally gotten over my death. Jeff's still in mourning. One wouldn't understand, and it’d derail the progress of the other. Be good to my family, and have a good time with them, Helena." The Envoy gave her a kiss on the cheek, "And take good care of your own."
“Being a mother of four is exhausting. And all the traveling I have to do to keep things together doesn’t help. But I know my work is far from done, so I’ll find some me time, I promise.”
