Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart Read online

  “Just my point, Adam. These days, a scripted speech invites distrust. Who wrote it? Am I up there in front of all the world as nothing more than a mouthpiece for inscrutable aliens? They don’t want me reading from a script. No, I’ll put it out there in my own words, in my own stumbling, rambling style.”

  “Very well. Of course, true paranoia would have you already compromised. Brainwashed, or not even human. What is the word? Replicant.”

  “I get it, Adam. I already know there’ll be knocks against us. Against my … integrity. This is why I intend to stick to facts, not opinions. This isn’t a sales pitch, is it? It’s an info-dump on what’s coming.”

  “Presumably you will take questions at some point.”

  She considered, and then shrugged. “We’ll see how it goes. But listen, they’ll try to manage the event. Seven-second delay on the live feed, with fingers hovering over the kill switch. Every government that knew about the Greys has been defending the decision to keep it secret on the basis of not wanting to panic humanity. The people thinking that was a good idea haven’t changed their minds. Secrecy is a habit. It stems from a world-view guided by fear and, ultimately, cowardice. It won’t die easily, because despite all our bluster we’re at heart a fearful species.”

  “Even when all you have to fear is each other?”

  “Especially then. Because we also know what we’re capable of. And that brings me to a question I had. This Blanket Presence, it’s planet-bound, isn’t it? Meaning once we leave the Earth, why we’re back to being able to do violence again. To the Greys, of course, but also to each other.”

  “Correct.”

  “So, nations could go back to a nasty free-for-all in our solar system.”

  “This is possible. Obviously, Samantha, the sooner your species comes to a collective understanding of itself, the better.”

  “I see storm-clouds ahead, Adam. Then there’s that other fear we have. Fear of you.”

  “Yes. Can I predict that your solar system will remain peaceful?”

  “Uh. Sure.”

  “There will be no seven-second delay,” Adam said. “No kill switch will function. Even power to the building will be independent and therefore immune to disruption. You will not be impeded, and all will hear. Samantha, the vessel is now ready for you.”

  “Oh crap. All right. Let’s get this started, shall we?”

  “We are now approaching the docking port.”

  She watched as the gift loomed closer. There were no running lights, nothing ostentatious to its grim form. It looked precisely like what it was: a hunter, a predator, a machine of violence and war. Studying it, she felt a brief flutter of uncertainty. Was this really the message to bring down from the heavens? A martial fist of molecularly-compressed metal and carbon composite, beneath a non-reflective, radiation-proof coating of dull greens and flat blacks? “It’s bigger than it’s supposed to be,” she observed as they drew still closer, and now she could see the docking port, a trapezoidal hatch limned in a faint glow.

  “The fictional source presumed certain unobtainable technologies, Samantha. FTL systems, for example, are massively dense and require complex shielding to contain quantum radicals in addition to a gravity-containment well which serves to negate mass. Sub-light propulsion is of course the largest component, assuming one desires consistency as well as near-light-speed capability. I elected to use an intermediary technology, a variation on the EFFE that employs radiant solar radiation in addition to a system’s electromagnetic gravity skein. Finally, there is the matter of human psychology. The greatest challenge your species will face in its new age of deep-space travel will be the effect of long-term confinement. To mitigate this, the larger the vessel the better. Accordingly, I have doubled the scale. It is our estimate that the ideal crew size for humans is between fifty and one hundred adults.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Eventually, you will be able to construct vessels that are worldlike and self-sustaining, but that is perhaps a century or more away.”

  “World-ships,” muttered Samantha. “With nobody dying of illnesses anymore, we’re going to need them.”

  “In the meantime, you will have Venus.”

  “Right. And how goes the other thing we talked about?”

  “Proceeding on schedule, Samantha.”

  The coupling of the two vessels was silent and seemingly perfect. She watched on the monitor as the hatch noiselessly slid open. “Oh,” she said, peering into the corridor beyond, “get rid of that red haze, please. Try for something more … Earth-normal.”

  “There are benefits to subdued interior lighting in that spectral range,” Adam said, “as your own submariners well know.”

  “Do I need to concentrate that hard? Do I need lighting that keeps my eyes from getting strained?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Right then. Proper daylight, please.”

  “Very well.”

  She watched as normal light bathed the corridor, watched as the blurry haze went away. Drawing a deep breath, she said, “No offense, Adam, but that psychological strain you were mentioning? Well, I need to get out of this fucking room and I need to do it right now.”

  A wall irised open and she found herself looking at the corridor. A new scent came into the air, like that of a new car. “Oh, that’s good, Adam. Nice touch, that smell. Pushes all the right buttons, despite it being probably slightly toxic.”

  “You will survive.” Adam’s voice sounded both smug and proud.

  She smiled. “You’re rather pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”

  “I am. And you will soon see why. Please, take possession of your gift, Samantha. I have compartmentalized an imprint of myself in order to populate the AI core for this vessel’s independent operation. You can of course call it Adam, or select a new name for this iteration. Given that its sensor package is necessarily constrained, it will evolve on its own and therefore diverge from the entity you are presently speaking with. You could elect Adam1 and Adam2—”

  “For crying out loud,” Samantha cut in as she stepped across the threshold and began making her way up the corridor, “I can do better than that. Imagination, remember? Me, big imagination. Me, writer, fiction, novels. This ship is going to have a woman’s voice, a smart woman, naturally.”

  “Eve?”

  Sam paused, and then shook her head. “Wrong connotations. Athena seems more fitting.”

  “Ah, yes. Apt. Born from my head. Shall I cease being Adam and become Zeus then?”

  “No, I’m comfortable with mixed-up mythologies. Besides, I don’t want any thematic continuity inviting disturbing subtext. The Greek pantheon was made up of seriously flawed gods.”

  “As flawed as their creators, you mean.”

  The corridor reached an intersection. She paused. “Okay. My stateroom first, and then the bridge. I trust there’s a bridge, Adam.”

  A new voice answered, a woman’s, mellifluous and serene. “Hello Samantha August, or shall I call you Captain?”

  “Call me anything you want, just not between midnight and nine a.m.”

  “I believe this is an example of humor. Very well. Welcome, Commissar August.”

  “Oh, ha ha. Nix that. The Swamp Boys will try to shoot me.”

  “They will fail.”

  “Not the point. Anything to the left triggers spasmodic hate among certain segments of the population I’m about to visit.”

  “To the left?”

  “People on the left side of the political spectrum are rule-breakers. The ones on the right are rule-makers. I’m simplifying but then, our world is getting simpler by the hour.”

  “Your stateroom can be accessed from the bridge as well as the corridor just outside the bridge. Command Level is four up. Proceed forward to the elevator which will open upon your approach. Step inside and announce your destination.”

  “I am naming you Athena,” Sam said as she walked forward to a section of wall that suddenly vanished to reveal the
elevator’s cab.

  “I applaud your wisdom and, need it be said, mine.”

  “Is Adam still listening?”

  “I was getting to that,” Athena said. “He has made the request, pending your approval. I should point out, I do possess a comparable range of sentience and dynamic contingency-based thought processes. If anything, I will prove more sensitive to your immediate concerns in that I am a much more limited presence, externalizing only as required for navigation of this vessel.”

  “Let him through.”

  For a brief instant Samantha thought she heard a sniff, but then Adam’s neutral modulations arrived.

  “Are you enjoying yourself so far, Samantha? Is Athena to your satisfaction?”

  “You need not answer that, Captain August,” Athena cut in, “as I am secure in my range of capability, which unlike Adam does not include an ongoing subroutine applying macro-cultural assessment algorithms to your every utterance. As with my namesake, my godly aspirations are focused upon one small city-state: this vessel, with its present complement of one.”

  “I should have toned down the verbosity,” Adam said.

  “Cut it out you two.” Samantha entered the elevator cab and said, “Command Level, please.”

  “I like the ‘please’ bit,” said Athena.

  The door sealed and a moment later opened again, this time revealing a different corridor configuration. Startled—Samantha had felt no hint of motion—she paused before stepping out.

  Athena’s tone was smug. “Bridge directly ahead. Stateroom entrance last door on the left. Your possessions will soon be transferred to it, although of course we could simply replicate a second set. But I thought it more amusing to assemble a pair of robotic drones to keep you company. You could name them Hewy and—”

  “Don’t! You’ll make me cry. No, different names, please. Let me think. Hmm, oh. A fan once sent me two corgi pups after I’d written a story about a lonely old woman.” She paused. “That was a bad week.”

  Adam asked, “The week in which you wrote the story or the week the pups arrived?”

  “There he goes again,” Athena said.

  “I remember considering Romulus and Remus, or Castor and Pollux, but decided that they were too pretentious. I settled on Bart and Lisa. Before finding a friendly family to adopt them.”

  Adam asked, “Do you dislike dogs, Samantha?”

  “No I like them just fine, especially the little plastic bags obnoxious owners leave on the beach or sidewalk.” She walked up the corridor. The stateroom door opened and she peeked inside. It looked suitably stately. “That will do.”

  The doorway to the bridge was larger and looked armored. It vanished at her approach. “How are you doing that?” she asked. There were no slots and no visible motion marking the door sliding one way or any other.

  “Phase-shifting,” Athena said. “The mechanisms for track-guided entrance and egress are notorious for becoming misaligned, particularly after weapon-fire impacts or any other hull-twisting event. Although Adam desired otherwise, as I was in charge of shipbuilding I overrode his suggested parameters and installed proper technology.”

  “You exceeded the tech level for this Intervention,” Adam said.

  “For Pacifists you two sure bitch a lot,” Sam observed as she stepped onto the bridge. “And what was that about hull-twisting and weapon impacts? I thought the Greys had crappy weaponry.”

  “There is another rapacious species in your immediate region of the galaxy,” said Adam, “as I may have mentioned. Somewhat more formidable than the Greys.”

  “And you can’t slap some reason into them?”

  “They are a non-centralized protoplasmic sentience,” Adam explained. “In effect, intelligent digestive juices.”

  “Oh,” said Sam. “Well, I talk to my stomach all the time.”

  “Does it listen?”

  “No, dammit. Actually, it’s more the other way around, if I’m honest. Stomach talks to me. I don’t listen.”

  “If you two are done,” said Athena, “I have some instructions to begin on the operation of this vessel, and the minutes are ticking by. If you truly want to halt the countdown on the Handshake Mission, we’d better get on with it.”

  “Exactly.” Samantha strode up to plant herself in the captain’s chair. As soon as she settled, a mass of holographic controls grew up out of the arm-rests. “Oh my, this looks complicated.”

  “The vessel is intended to be crewed,” Athena said. “However, as instructed, it can also be operated from a single station. Namely, the command chair. Working closely with me, of course. In an emergency, I can operate independently. Indeed, for this immediate mission and if you find yourself suddenly disinclined to ascend this particular learning curve at this particular time, I can fly this vessel. You need only sit back and relax.”

  “Your confidence overwhelms, Athena.”

  “This is only natural, as my specifications are—”

  “Not your self-confidence,” Samantha cut in. “I meant your confidence in me.”

  A moment of silence, and then, “Ah, sarcasm.”

  “Listen,” Samantha said, looking at the bewildering array of information to her right and left, “can’t you brain-cram this all into me? I seem to recall Adam mentioning something about headsets that educate super-fast.”

  “Yes. Those. Have a cigarette, Samantha.”

  “That much of an ordeal?”

  “Have a cigarette, and then we’ll info-dump your brain, impart new muscle-memory, maximize your synaptic receptivity, and, given your particular brain’s unique structure, we will impose heightened spatial awareness and higher-concept mathematical comprehension capability: the gift for numbers you never had.”

  “How long will all that take?”

  “About two minutes following that cigarette I mentioned.”

  “Will I have a headache?”

  “No.”

  “So, why the ciggie?”

  “It will take that long to assemble the specificity. This is not a generic plug and play procedure. That would do damage to any organic neural bundle. And lastly, we need you sitting still.”

  Adam then said, “Perhaps I should warn you, Samantha, about the existential headache to follow. Which may, quite possibly, affect your state of mind when delivering your address in the UN.”

  She grunted. “I was beginning to wonder if something like that might kick in. Turning me into a math freak? That’s a whole different way of thinking. Could it fuck up my writing ability?”

  “Unlikely,” Adam said. “Consider music and lyricists. Rather, the sudden influx of technical knowledge, the physicality of heightened reaction times, the comprehension cascades arriving so fast as to seem almost instinctual. All of these are fuel sinks. At fullest output, mere thinking can exhaust you. Neural exhaustion can trigger systemic depression. Your nanosuite can respond, of course, but your mood-swings may be pronounced following fullest stimulation—”

  “Ha ha, Adam, you blissfully unaware male-composite entity. I’m in menopause. Mood-swings? You have no idea how restrained I’ve been in your non-presence. If you’d showed up as an android or robot, Adam, I’d probably have kicked you into pieces by now, and then crushed every piece under my heel.” She waved a hand and then drew out a cigarette and lit it. “Athena, bring it on.”

  “You chose well, Adam,” said Athena.

  “Thank you, Athena,” Adam replied.

  Sam sent a stream of smoke pluming upward, only to see it suddenly vanish. “Adam! You did it! Brilliant!”

  There was no headset after all. About seven minutes later, Samantha reached out and engaged the holographic controls. “Here we go. Drives powering up, cloak engaged. See you later, Adam. Time to take this thing into atmosphere—oh wow, eighty-seven seconds to cross the distance between the Moon and Earth, that’s fast. Okay, sensors active—let’s not hit anything on the way down, shall we? Shit, did we clutter up low orbit or what? Athena, can I get a coffee?” />
  “Absolutely not,” Athena replied.

  Samantha paused. “Oh. Right. Uh, Adam, apologies. I get it now.”

  “You will adjust,” Adam said. “Be assured, none of your fundamental belief systems have in any way altered or been compromised.”

  “Hmm, but would I even know if they were?”

  “No. But such alteration is tantamount to rape, Samantha, and rape is violence. We cannot engage in that.”

  “Right. So …” They were closing in on Earth, “uhm, the technology for this super-fast info-dump …”

  “Safeguards are in place to prevent your species from ever acquiring it. All training in the planet-bound centers will be conducted by me, and at a much slower pace.”

  “Good,” Samantha said. She sighed. “We are so not ready for this.”

  It felt strange to be returning to Earth. For too long the planet had hung suspended in the black, centered on a screen like the image on a poster that might have been seen on the bedroom wall of ten-year-old Carl Sagan. She had watched the slow gyrations of weather systems over the oceans, tilting her head to find her bearings given the image’s ninety degree shift to what she was used to. North pole to the right, a planet lying on its side. It was a peculiarity that Samantha had wanted to ask about, but for some reason never did.

  Isolation did strange things. No matter how many newsfeeds she watched, she had felt disconnected from humanity. Her only truly human connection had come from her conversations with Hamish, and these had been her sole life-line to sanity. But the world she shared with her husband was not the world she witnessed on the monitors. Each screen had hovered before her like a murky window at a zoo’s reptile house, into which she peered to study a steamy interior of heady smells and turgid, overheated air. She had watched a succession of faces: reporters and witnesses, the victims and the aggrieved, set against an endless variety of backdrops. The mass of humanity on display, shot by shot, in singular portraits of confusion and loss. What did it all signify? She had no idea.

  Returning home … to the world of her birth. Even the notion felt discordant. How many humans had ever been able to consider it? A few score of astronauts, and now, presumably, a handful of the Abducted still shaking off their bewilderment. She had spent her time in the company of an alien AI, during which every conversation had been founded upon rational premises, extricated from the natural fugue of human sensibilities, and all the emotional turmoil that came with it.