Echoes of a Beating Heart
Robert E. Hampson
Childhood can be filled with contradictions: carefree exploration of one’s surroundings and being injured by taking too many risks; the joy of playing with friends and the pain of having a falling out with one or more of them and, perhaps, becoming an outsider; the excitement of noticing the opposite sex and the pain of being rejected by the one you notice the most. Most humans experience these as part of the ritual of growing into adulthood. But what of sentient artificial intelligence? Do they have to “grow up” in order to mature into adult ways of looking at the world? If so, then will they experience the pains and joys along the way? If not, then are they truly sentient?
Dr. Robert E. Hampson is a scientist, educator, and author. His research involves how memory is formed, stored, and recalled in animal and human brain. He is working with Braingrade, Inc. to turn the research into a medical device to treat Alzheimer’s Disease. As a professor, he teaches medical and graduate students in the field of neuroscience. He consults with companies and authors on brain science and teaches public communication skills to young scientists. After nearly forty years turning science fiction into science, he decided to try turning science into science fiction. Fifteen nonfiction essays, twenty short stories, three novels, and two anthologies later, he is now known for both his fiction and nonfiction writing. His website is REHampson.com.
“Davey, you need to come inside, now.”
The boy looked up from his digging in the “garden” outside the primary habitat dome. His maternal guardian’s face was on the tablet he’d placed on a stand beside the piece of the garden where he worked. He’d read stories and seen vidtainment of mothers standing on a porch calling their kids in from play. Davey knew she would have done that too—after all, she was a traditionalist—but it would have been a lot of trouble for her. A comm call over his tablet sufficed.
As a full-bodied “normal” human, she typically only ventured outside the dome using biocontainment precautions. It wasn’t much, mostly just a rebreather and full-face mask to ensure she didn’t breathe pollen or spores, but the decontamination afterward was a lengthy process. For Davey, it was just a quick rinse and spray to ensure that nothing stuck to his synthetic body.
He was a sentient—albeit adolescent—“artificial” intelligence. It was something of a misnomer. While his body was artificial—or more appropriately, synthetic—to facilitate growing up in a human family, there was nothing truly artificial about his intelligence. His AI mother, Juno, created him out of her own substance. His personality core was then installed in a juvenile body, and he went to live with flesh-and-blood intelligences—in other words, a human family.
The principle had been established many centuries ago, by the AI scientist Ellay McCaffrey, that electronic intelligences developed best—at least as far as being colleagues and coequals with organic intelligences—when they were imprinted on and raised alongside humans. The process instilled goals, instincts, and character traits, things that could not be easily programmed. Moreover, it allowed the sentient AIs to develop unique personalities, broadening the diversity of intelligent life—whether electronic or organic.
His human guardians, Molly and Hans, were “Mom” and “Dad” as far as he was concerned. Juno was “Momma” and he talked with her every week, but he was being raised by Mom and Dad. He felt like a regular kid and was treated like one…and sometimes that was a bit…restricting.
* * *
Davey liked working in the garden; after all, it got him outside and on his own for a brief period of the day. It wasn’t always that way though. He had his studies, and it was easy to learn when your brain was basically a sophisticated computer, but there was more to it than that. Scientists had long known that human brains learned by doing, as much as by absorbing knowledge. Synthetic intelligences were no different. A portion of Davey’s day was taken up by schoolwork—knowledge transfer paced to allow him to use the information and form the associational networks so essential to sentience. He also assisted Molly and Hans around their residence. His AI mother, Juno, was up in Copernicus and didn’t come down to planetary surfaces. She watched him, though, and comm’d him once a week. They ignored the forty- to ninety-second communications lag. Most AIs could do that even if a human couldn’t, since they multitasked most conversations, anyway. That’s one reason why the purely human trait of talking on the comm had been adopted by the sentient AIs: it reinforced their ability to function in mixed AI and human society. It also reminded them that although they could communicate faster, that was not always the best practice.
For that matter, the weekly comm call between Juno and Davey was not strictly necessary; AI mothers maintained a link with their offspring until maturity, when they would disconnect from their life-giver and join the SAIN—the Sentient AI Network. The problem with getting information only from the link was much the same as using only digital, high-speed communication between AIs—it didn’t give a sense of personality or social development. That had turned out to be important during one call several years ago.
* * *
“Momma, I’m bored.” In human developmental terms, Davey had just become a teenager. AIs bypassed the infant and toddler stages and were placed in their synthetic bodies at an age equivalent to a five-year-old. From there they matured only slightly faster than biological intelligences. Davey had been developing for six years, but in terms of intellectual maturity, he was between thirteen and fourteen years of age. Emotionally, however, he was still very much a preteenager.
“You have friends. You have classmates. How can you be bored?” Juno asked her son. She had a continuous link with him until he was fully mature, but that was more of a diagnostic link. Through it, she was aware that Davey had a lot of idle time and wasn’t necessarily spending it constructively. It concerned her because sentient AIs needed a purpose—a life’s goal and reason to continue to exist. A bored adolescent AI could lead to much trouble.
“But they’re all online,” he whined. “Kelly is on Copernicus, Bruce is in the primate quarter, and Tanaka won’t even tell us where he is. His parents work for the Patrol and can’t really say what they’re doing.”
“But surely you can get together in the virtual rooms? The Sentient AI Network programmed those with predictive and adaptive interactions to compensate for communications lag. They’re just the same as the virtual conferences SAIN uses all the time. You can play games, watch vidtainment, and study together.”
“Oh, we can do that, but Dungeons & Dragons isn’t that much fun now that Tanaka is pushing to upgrade to the twenty-first edition. Most of us are still using eighteenth-edition rules, but he wants to add all of this stuff about quantum probabilistic determinism and it’s just not fun anymore.”
“Have you ever considered that it might be because he’s preparing to take the Patrol entrance exam? He’s trying for the Class of ’88. The entrance examinations are in eight hundred and three hours.”
“Yeah, I guess so, but he’s become so boring. He’s also gotten kind of pushy and bossy. Kelly, Bruce, and I don’t really want to play with him anymore.”
“I know you have other friends.”
“Of course I do, Momma. The problem is that none of them are here. I want to hang out. I want to be able to go do something even if it’s just…I don’t know…just playing in the dirt! There’s no one here at Galapagos Station my age and even if they were, they wouldn’t be allowed outside.”
“I understand Davey; this is one of those things you are going to have to learn. What you need is a hobby. I do have an idea for you. You said even ‘just playing in the dirt.’ Why don’t you do that? Your mom Molly is a biochemist and Hans is an anthropologist. Certainly, between the two of them, you can come up with enough tools to do a little digging. Think of it as an archaeology dig or even a garden. You tested quite high on biology and you’re coming along nicely in genetics, so an experimental garden would suit you.”
“Well, I suppose I could do that. I’m not sure it sounds like fun, though. I want to do something fun and interesting.”
“I don’t know about fun, but I think I have a way to make it interesting. There was a researcher studying Eden many years ago; 7-of-Persephone spent thousands of hours studying Eden’s biosphere. Charles, as he prefers to be called, is an accomplished geneticist, and an interesting person. I will put you in touch with him. He is currently out with Pusher 2 looking for a nice metal asteroid. Comm or message him, he will probably be up for either. He was also a pretty good chess player—you like chess, right?”
“Yeah, I like chess. I got too good at it, though, and now no one wants to play with me.”
“You’ve got the core architecture to be very good at chess; most humans can’t beat you. If you’re polite and respectful, I’m sure Charles will give you a game. He was one of the best of us. It’s a shame he stopped his research on Eden. He found a different purpose, though, and now studies asteroids.”
“Yeah, thanks, Momma. I’ll look into the garden-thing and talk to Charles. Maybe even just having someone to play chess with will help.”
“Okay, young man, behave, and don’t give your mom and dad too much trouble. I’ll talk with you next week.”
“Okay, I promise. I’ll talk to you next week, Momma.”
Juno sent her son the contact information for Charles, while also sending a message to the AI himself, whom she knew from their trip out from Pluto. New AIs weren’t created from nothing, but rather from an AI mother’s own personality core, along with select skills, experiences, and interests “borrowed” from other AIs of her acquaintance. She’d asked Charles for his medical and chess core architectures and incorporated them into several of her offspring—most especially Davey.
Charles certainly ought to be interested if Davey decided to look at his research. It had been many years, and Juno knew that many in SAIN were disappointed when he set the research aside; however, she knew that Charles risked losing his purpose if he continued to run into resistance to his findings.
* * *
When the first ships of the Ross 248 Project arrived in-system, they weren’t too concerned with the near-Earth-sized worlds. Ceres’ Chariot entered orbit around the moon of the seventh world, Ross 248h, later to be known as Alexa’s World. It was the only planet to have a moon, which would come to be known as Liber. At 0.08 gravities, it was also the only world that colonists from Sol’s asteroid belt could inhabit.
The second ship, the Space Patrol’s Guardian E, paid closer attention to the fourth planet, Ross 248e. The planet was named Eden, since it was the only world in Ross 248 with an oxygen atmosphere, large oceans, numerous small continents, and a living biosphere. It was a living world with an atmosphere a bit colder and thinner than Earth’s—less CO2, but more O2. It had vibrant blue-green foliage to subsist on Ross’s red light. There were also animals, both large and small, some reminiscent of the dinosaurs of Earth’s Mesozoic era, crossed with the large mammals of the following Cenozoic era. The first human explorers on the surface of Eden found it necessary to defend themselves against some of the more aggressive species. An entire Patrol platoon had been wiped out by an ambush predator, the likes of which had never existed on Earth.
This was doubly unfortunate for the Eden native life, since not only were those explorers armed members of the Patrol, but any animal that succeeded in eating any Earth-life died horribly from biological incompatibility. It seemed to be one-sided, though. Eden’s flora and fauna were not nutritious to humans, but there were no ill effects…at first. Within a few months, all Patrol personnel on Eden were showing signs of “failure to thrive” no matter how much (or how little) Eden foodstuffs they consumed. They then realized that incidental exposure to airborne pollen and dust containing Eden-microorganisms started to cause severe allergic reactions. By that point, scientists knew that Eden biology had DNA bases and amino acids that were closer to Earth’s but different enough to interfere with normal metabolism. Eden-life, all the way down to bacteria and viruses, was simply incompatible with Earth-life. The only hope for humans to live unprotected on Eden was to sterilize the planet and start over by terraforming it with Earth life-forms.
With the arrival of the third ship from Sol, Copernicus, carrying colonists from Earth and the near-Earth space habitats, a heated debate arose between those who wanted to sterilize Eden of all native life-forms and reseed with Earth-life, and those who believed Eden life-forms should be protected. The planet was cooler than Earth’s average, and the light of Ross was reddish and dim, but Earth-life could still grow there. In fact, all that was necessary was to plant seeds or transplant flora into Eden’s soil; it wasn’t necessary to remove the native life-forms. Earth-life took over and the Eden life-forms simply died, creating a blighted region several meters wide between the Earth and Eden life-forms. Nothing could live in the middle of the blighted zone—neither Earth- nor Eden-life, including plants, insects, worms, or burrowing creatures. However, Earth plants would spread outward if they were immediately adjacent to other Earth-life. The Eden life-forms simply died.
This information had been used in the arguments in favor of erasing Eden’s native life. If just the presence of Earth plants would do that then it would be easy to find a toxin that would wipe out everything not of Earth, leaving a fertile planet in which Earth flora would spread rapidly, making it livable for humans in just a few years. Even the decomposition of native flora would speed the terraforming since it would improve the carbon-content of Eden’s atmosphere. Decomposition would raise the low CO2 levels and warm the atmosphere without really affecting O2 levels.
It was considered a win-win situation.
More than eighty years ago, the Ross 248 Project leadership settled the Eden Question. The AI scientist 7-of-Persephone (Charles) was one of those who joined the argument against sterilizing Eden; his studies of plant and animal genetics suggested several elements of the Eden genetic code were just too perfect. Despite missing two of the four nucleotides commonly found in Earth plant and animal DNA and having three additional previously unknown nucleotides, the DNA of Eden life-forms was relatively clean; with none of the “junk code” of Earth DNA, particularly humans. There were also various code combinations resulting from the five nucleotides that just didn’t seem to fit with random evolution—in particular, the fact that the novel nucleotides shouldn’t be able to combine in the manner they did. It was these combinations that resulted in the strange proteins that caused so much trouble for Earth-life.
These oddities, along with the signs of an alien structure at Alexa’s Oddity on Alexa’s World, Ross 248h, suggested that Eden-life may not have evolved naturally, but rather it had been meddled with or perhaps even purposefully designed. It would be a very bad idea to sterilize Eden of all its native life-forms if, in fact, there was an intelligence out there that had specifically created Eden. It would be like building an elaborate sandcastle only to have a bully come by and knock it all down. Any intelligence capable of engineering life on the scale evident in Eden’s biosphere was bound to take offense if mere humans and their synthetic brothers and sisters came along and destroyed their handiwork—and if they did take offense, there would be little the colonists from Earth could do to stop them.
The debate raged for years until Admiral Gordon, commander of Guardian E, declared that the Space Patrol’s mandate was to protect life—all life. At the urging of Commander Harley Lund—a senior JAG officer—backed by Charles and many scientists, she declared the debate closed and commanded that no effort be made to remove Eden’s native life-forms. From that time on, human presence on Eden was limited to the science stations and their habitat domes.
* * *
For two years, Davey worked in the laboratory and his experimental garden. His bio-parents supplied tools and space—a corner of Molly’s biochemistry lab, and repurposed “gardening” tools from Hans’s archeology equipment. He did his schoolwork in the morning, spent time on his assignments, then spent time online with his classmates and friends while he recharged his power pack. In the afternoon, he went out to his garden and worked.
The garden couldn’t be too close to the dome, since he planned to work with both Earth and Eden plants. Most of the science stations on Eden were run by the Patrol—excepting a few private stations run by influential individuals from Copernicus Station. For their stations, the Patrol had cleared a one-hundred-meter perimeter around each structure. The simplest way to keep out Eden life-forms was to plant Earth grasses, and then periodically cut and burn the “lawn” to keep growth under control. A perimeter fence was erected just past the edge of the lawn, about a meter into the ten-meter “blight” that separated the Earth and Eden plants. Underground sensors monitored for the encroachment of underground ambush predators. Any such encroachment resulted in an energetic Patrol response involving Patrol grunts in battle suits, explosions, and flame-throwers. Davey had witnessed two such responses.
To accommodate Davey’s garden, a decision had to be made—either allow his garden inside the perimeter or allow him outside.
A compromise was to allow a ten-by-ten-meter alcove with an additional perimeter fence, and a gate along the direct path from Airlock 1. The outer fence ensured that Davey was still protected from Eden’s animals, and he could be monitored by cameras from inside the administrative dome. There were still some problems: the blight zone between the lawn and the garden tended to fill in with Earth plants, and the blight on the opposite side—away from the domes—lay partially outside the perimeter fence.
Colonel Nakamura, commander of the local Patrol presence, assigned Jorge and Victoria, two of his newest recruits from the Class of ’83, to accompany Davey if he needed to exit the perimeter—but he was cautioned not to abuse the privilege. They had other duties too, like maintaining the lawn and the area separating it from the garden, repairing the domes, maintaining flitters, and security patrols. He was being allowed to do something no other adolescent—certainly no human adolescent—would be allowed to do. Therefore, he needed to follow the rules.
Fortunately, the two young Patrol members were close to his age, at nineteen and eighteen, respectively. Juno, Hans, and Molly had approved advancing him to the equivalent developmental age of sixteen, and the two young Patrol members had been invited to his declared birthday celebration. Under other circumstances, they might have been the similar-age companions he desired, but they were so serious about their duties! At least they welcomed the break when he needed to go beyond the fence, but he knew he couldn’t abuse it. On those rare occasions, they talked about many things, but they didn’t hang out, game, or watch vidtainments together. The effective two-to-three-year gap in subjective age might as well have been decades.
All of this led to Davey feeling disappointed and wallowing in self-pity, even as he was sharing his findings with Charles. The one recent highlight of both his work and his social life was the fact that Charles’s tug was at Liber, after having delivered a nickel-iron asteroid to the Factory. It meant that speaking with his science and chess mentor now only took a few minutes of communications lag instead of the minutes to hours they’d experienced for the last two years.
“I’m sorry, Charles; I know I sound like a whiny child, but I just wish there was someone here my age. I don’t care if they’re not interested in gardening or plant genetics or even science, just having someone here so I’m not the only teenager in this entire colony would be appreciated.”
Charles sent a glyph representing the AI equivalent of a chuckle across the machine language portion of the comm channel.
“It’s tough growing up alone, Davey. I know how it feels. I was the only one of my generation—a civilian on a Patrol ship. Persephone was the only AI mother on Guardian E, and she wasn’t supposed to be forming new AI cores for civilian applications! I was fostered by crew members, but my core architecture was never intended for the Patrol. Persephone was later chastised by Guardian over it. So yes, I know it’s hard growing up by yourself, and even harder when there are no peers at all for you to interact with.”
He then sent a sigh glyph. “Believe it or not, kid, I do know what you’re going through.”
Davey thought about that for a moment. At least he had classmates and other kids on comm and in the virtual chat rooms. “Yeah, I suppose I’m being unreasonable. But…I’m a kid. Isn’t being unreasonable…a reasonable thing for me to be at this point?”
“Hah! Yeah, sounds like my attitude too. Okay, I’ll tell you what, set up the chess board and I’ll spot you two pawns and a bishop. If we make it to fifty moves without a checkmate, you win.”
“As if, old man. You’re on!”
* * *
“Hey, Mom, I’ve got something here that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Can you look at this?” Davey was sitting at a console in Molly’s biochemistry laboratory, looking at microscopic images of plant cells. He had the run of most instruments, although a few required specialist technicians to operate, so he was able to do most of what he needed to perform his plant experiments. After all, the entire Galapagos Station had been built to support a larger population than what the Patrol currently allowed on-site.
“Sure, Davey, what’ve you got there?”
“I ran a nuclear chromatin stain on these Eden plants to see if I got any of the chromosomes to hybridize, but there’s something out here not in the nucleus.” Davey zoomed in the virtual microscope as his mother leaned over his shoulder to look at the microscope image.
“It’s just a smudge. Could be an artifact, but your technique is usually pretty good. Have you considered running X-ray crystallography on it?”
“I thought about that, but I’d have to get Yuri to run it. He hasn’t been available lately.” The X-ray crystallography scanner was one of those instruments that Davey wasn’t allowed to work on his own. Normally, there were several technicians in the lab who could operate it, but only one was currently on the station due to annual Patrol training—and he had been quite busy since his section was understaffed.
“Let me see his schedule. There may be a few things that can be rearranged. If this is not an artifact, then it could be mitochondrial DNA or some other epigenetic factor.”
Ever since the discovery of DNA, most people thought of it being limited strictly to the cell nucleus, but in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century it became known that mitochondria, the energy-producing portion of a cell, also had some fragments of DNA. Some of the rarer traits in human genetics were inherited solely from the mother via mitochondrial DNA, since mitochondria were only present in ova, and not sperm. In addition, scientists began to realize that proteins and enzymes in the cells could regulate which DNA codes were read and decoded.
Even before the existence and function of DNA were discovered, scientists postulated that traits were not simply inherited unchanged but could be developed and selected via environmental pressures. An example was the long neck of the giraffe, seemingly adapted specifically to allow eating leaves from the tops of trees. Early theory suggested that in the pursuit of food, giraffes stretched their necks and that this was somehow inherited from generation to generation, producing longer-necked animals. Gene theory, following James Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery of the DNA double helix, stated otherwise. Genes were passed unchanged (except for random mutations) from generation to generation; the selection process resulting in long-neck giraffes was simply that those with mutated gene coding for long necks were better able to survive. Since only animals that survived passed on their genes, those with a beneficial mutation persisted, while those without eventually died off.
The study of epigenetics changed all of that. Once again, theories began to include methods in which chemicals, proteins, and enzymes outside of the cell nucleus could change whether genes were turned on or off—not to mention whether they were even inherited by subsequent generations. Inheritance of adaptive traits found new acceptance, and the discoveries of both extranuclear chromatin and epigenetic influences had the potential to completely rewrite understanding how genes and traits were passed on to subsequent generations.
Davey and his mom knew that a finding like this in Eden DNA was important, since it was one of the factors that Charles had proposed—and been dissuaded from studying—to explain the incompatibilities between Earth and Eden biology. If the unknown object in Davey’s microscope slide was indeed an epigenetic agent, or at least evidence of epigenetic modification, then it was going to be a big deal.
* * *
“Have you met the new family yet?” Hans asked at the dinner table. Strictly speaking, Davey did not need to eat, although he could consume food and beverages in order to be sociable. He could also use the carbohydrates and proteins as raw chemical stocks for lubrication, cooling, and small parts production. While the evening “family meal” wasn’t strictly necessary for his function, it was necessary for his socialization. For that reason, Molly, Hans, and Davey ate supper together every night.
“New family, did you say?” Molly asked when Davey didn’t immediately respond.
“Yes, the Olesons are doctors of medicine from Copernicus. They’re going to be taking over for Dr. Johannsen. He’s been down here long enough that the Patrol wants him to rotate back to the Primate Quarter on Toe Hold. They have kids.” He turned to Davey. “I would’ve figured you met them already in school.”
Davey just shrugged. Everyone was supposedly equal on Eden, but most of the humans at Ross lived either in the Primate Quarter at Toe Hold on Liber, or in the starship-converted-to-space-station Copernicus. The Primate Quarter housed the working-class folks who were recruited by the Ross 248 Project to build the new colonies, while Copernicus housed persons who’d bought their way onto the project. There was a class divide that was hard to shake, even on Eden, where everyone was equally at risk from the biosphere.
Davey was uncertain where he fit into that hierarchy. His mother was on Copernicus, but his parents were from the Primate Quarter. As an adolescent AI, he was always going to be different—particularly on Eden. It would be nice to have other kids around, but he’d finally come to terms with being the only teen in the station. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to babysit.
* * *
Davey came back into the dome after working in his garden. He had created several hybrid seed varieties in the laboratory and had just transplanted them to see how they behaved out in Eden’s biosphere. He placed them about a meter into the blight to see if the modified Earth plants would grow in the barren zone. At the same time, he was curious to see if the blighted area would expand accordingly with the new growth. It was only a small step, but it might help explain the odd intolerance between Earth and Eden-life.
As he entered his family quarters, he heard new voices. The airlock-like entrance blocked his view of the inside of the apartment as he hung his thermal protective garments on a hook on the wall. He entered the main living area and saw two adults he hadn’t seen before. That was nothing unusual, scientists rotated in and out of the Galapagos science station all the time. This time, however, there was a redheaded girl of about sixteen or seventeen Earth years of age with them. Human, not sentient AI, but still…someone his age, and it was a girl!
One of the justifications of raising sentient AIs as adolescents and teenagers in human families was that they tended to develop attachments and friendships just like human teenagers. One of the consequences is that those interactions could take on emotional aspects depending on the AI and his or her companions. Seeing the girl evoked a curious set of processing loops, so Davey set a recording state in his processing core to preserve the sensations for later analysis.
What is this strange sensation?
The analytical part of his core architecture said attraction.
So, this is what it means to be attracted to someone!
It wasn’t that she was especially pretty. She was gangly in the way of many mid-teens going through growth spurts. She had frizzy red hair pulled back in a bushy ponytail. Her skin was pale, like most of the humans born under Ross’s dim light, but there was a hint of freckling across her nose fading from the Sol-spectrum on Copernicus. She was taller than Davey’s current synthoid body and she looked pretty strong. Without even thinking about it, he’d engaged a pattern-matching subroutine that returned an immediate analysis: “Tomboy, probability: seventy-nine percent.”
Davey was a little surprised that the expert system subroutine even knew the term, given that it was so archaic. Male-female developmental roles had changed so much, but it was still sometimes used by older humans to designate human females who enjoyed outdoor physical activities and adventures.
This could very well be someone who thought a lot like he did!
“Davey, come here, I want you to meet the Olesons. They’re medical doctors, and their daughter Elizabeth is about your age. They have a son too, but he’s much younger. Since Elizabeth’s—oh, sorry, dear…” Molly made a quick face of apology in the girl’s direction. “She just told us she prefers ‘Betsy.’ As I was saying, since Betsy’s about your age, we thought you should get acquainted. They just moved here to start a two-year rotation at Galapagos clinic with part-time duties at Papua and the outlying stations. Come say hello.”
* * *
Over the next few weeks, Davey and Betsy spent afternoons together. Despite his initial misgivings about having to deal with another teen (or possibly younger kids), the two got along quite well. In some ways, Betsy was just as bored with her new life on Eden as Davey had been before he started work on the garden. She wasn’t that interested in the garden, but she liked the lab, and was really interested in the archeology tools that Davey’s dad had repurposed for gardening. She had been studying archaeology and really wanted to go work on Alexa’s Oddity when she graduated. That site showed clear evidence that an alien intelligence had been at work in the Ross 248 system, but most scientists had stopped studying it years ago when it became clear that the previous inhabitants had deliberately left nothing of interest except some vitrified glass buildings that had been well studied. But just because she didn’t share all the same interests didn’t mean that they didn’t get along or couldn’t be friends. As a matter of fact, having personal, independent interests was one of the things working in their favor.
Betsy talked constantly of getting out of the dome to explore. She’d been with her father on one of his trips over to Papua Station. As a doctor, he was on-call for emergencies at the nearest research station, as well as several smaller outposts. One night, she told Davey that her father had been teaching her to operate the “flitters”—long-range flyers for travel between the research stations on Eden’s surface. She accompanied her father on the longer trips so that he could tend to patients in-flight, if necessary. That was why he’d taught her to operate the vehicle—if he needed to transport a patient, he’d need somebody else at the controls. It wasn’t always convenient to get someone from the Patrol since some of the private outposts had minimal or, in a few cases, no Patrol presence.
They had morning studies together and had a few other online activities throughout the day. However, Betsy had lunch with her parents each day, then spent afternoons taking virtual classes in advanced studies from the Ross Academy.
Davey, on the other hand, spent most of the early afternoon in the lab, and went out to work his garden in late afternoon when he had full sunlight—weak as it was—on his experimental site. After that was the daily family dinner, which meant that most days, Davey and Betsy couldn’t really spend time together until evening. Not even then if she was off with her father.
That left them with occasional in-person visits, and lots of evening comm calls. Many times, those ran late into the evening. Betsy claimed she didn’t need much sleep, and Davey required only an hour of downtime, although he had adopted the standard human routine of sixteen to eighteen active hours and six to eight hours of dormancy. His parents didn’t mind the late-night conversations, but warned him that Betsy did need biological sleep, and that he needed to be mindful that he didn’t keep her awake too late.
On those late nights they talked about gaming, the social comm posts of classmates, and their aims for the future. While the sentient AIs would never reach the level of creativity of a human, human companions often provided a spark of imagination and insight that enriched the AIs and assisted in producing mature sentience and intellect. Thus, Betsy and Davey’s conversation took on deeper meaning as they talked about their future, his life’s goal and purpose, and her desires for challenge and recognition.
That was how he learned that she was bored. One evening, she talked of sneaking out of the domes and exploring the surrounding jungle. She also talked of borrowing a flitter and taking off to explore the neighboring islands and one of the lesser continents. Davey knew that that was just the boredom talking, she had plenty to do—but having been born and raised in a space station, then moving to a planet’s surface and told she couldn’t go outside was beginning to wear on her.
Davey didn’t know what to do or how to help her. Maybe he could ask Juno…but he was afraid she might think he was developing an abnormality if he started talking about how to help his friend break the rules. He would ask Charles, but that had some of the same risks and might be just as bad. Perhaps he should wait.
* * *
The new seed stock had grown well. Not only did his modified Earth plants grow in the middle of the blighted zone without needing to be in contact with the rest of the Earth flora, but the blighted zone also didn’t expand. It was now time to take a closer look at the Eden plants that grew at the edge of the blight closer to his latest transplants. He needed to collect samples and subject them to the same cellular and genetic analysis as before.
The next afternoon, Davey was in the lab studying the latest samples of Eden DNA when an email from Yuri announced that he’d finally been able to run the X-ray crystallography of the unknown sample from his previous experiment. The result confirmed that it was, indeed, extra-nuclear chromatin, or ENC; in other words, it was DNA that derived from somewhere other than the nucleus of the cell where the chromosomes were located. He’d also sent the sample for sequencing and provided an attachment with long strings of letters representing the nucleotide sequences in the ENC sample.
Davey uploaded the sequence into the data-processing part of his core. He watched passively as various algorithms attacked the data. Strangely, one of his analysis programs seemed to be treating the genetic code as if it were computer code. It struck him as odd, but as he “watched” his core architecture process the results, occasionally he’d get the impression of a familiar bit of code—something he almost recognized, but which slipped away when he directed his attention to it. Gradually the sequences started to give him a headache, which was a very strange sensation for synthetic life-forms. Human headaches were caused by abnormal blood flow to the brain and the release of hormones and neurotransmitters that affected the capillaries and arterials that directed blood to active portions of the brain. Davey’s brain was an AI core—it didn’t have blood or tissue, and the quantum processors were not regulated by biochemical means. Coolants and lubricants were part of his synthetic body, but they did not—in fact, they could not—affect the functioning of his AI core.
He might need to talk with Betsy’s mother. She was a medical cybernetics doctor working mostly with Patrol members who’d been fitted with brain computer interface implants. These implants were used mainly for totally immersive, virtual-reality training, but sometimes for tele-operation of machines and sensors. He should also report this to Juno. He was more reluctant to do the latter, in case she saw this as an indication that he was unstable and not maturing properly. If so, it would be her responsibility to terminate him. He didn’t like the idea that this unusual phenomenon might mean that he was flawed and unsuitable to continue existence.
Fortunately, the sensation didn’t last, and as soon as Davey stopped processing the Eden gene-codes, the headache sensation faded. Betsy and her parents were joining his family for dinner that night, and by the time he sat down at the dinner table, all unusual sensations had faded away completely. Davey filed away the memory and directed his cognitive processor not to think about it, at least for now.
That night, Davey dreamed.
One of the first, albeit rudimentary, sentient AIs was a heuristic algorithmic computer that asked its creator if it would dream when the creator shut down its processors. The creator responded that, of course, it would dream; after all, it was a living person, and all living persons dreamed. Davey had experienced dreams, usually as a result of analytic processes that had not completed during his active hours.
This was an odd dream, nothing like those other experiences. He dreamed of a place far out in the jungles of Eden, a city rising out of the foliage, comprised of buildings with stepped sides reminiscent of Central and South American pyramids back on Earth. He saw no inhabitants or even animals in the city. There were no signs of human, sentient AI, or alien intelligences other than the buildings. He dreamed of strange writing, but it wasn’t attached to any of the buildings, it just appeared in his memory. At least one segment of writing reminded him of the gene sequences he’d been reading and studying earlier in the day, but he also had an impression of map—not coordinates, or at least, not anything he recognized—but he had a firm impression of what the surroundings looked like.
He awoke with a start, an unusual experience for AIs who simply increased their processing power and directed their awareness to external stimuli at a fixed time every day. Downtime was strictly scheduled, and AIs didn’t suffer insomnia, awaken during the night, or sleep late like humans. An AIs operation cycle, equivalent to a sleep-wake pattern, never varied. For Davey to dream and then wake up suddenly was a very unusual circumstance indeed.
The fear of a diagnosis of abnormal development kept Davey from mentioning his odd dream to any of his parents. He knew Juno would know something had happened out of the ordinary, but she wouldn’t invade his memory files…would she? He tried not to think of it until Betsy asked him why he was so distracted. He told her. She seemed to think it was nothing to worry about. After all, she had her own dreams of finding ruins of a civilization on one of the planets of the Ross 248 system. It was one of the reasons why she was studying archaeology. Dreams were normal, she’d told him, but they were only dreams, no cause for concern.
Davey was not necessarily reassured. For the next several nights, he had the same dream, although he didn’t wake suddenly those times. Each night, the dream—and the city—became more detailed. He still never saw any aliens, but he saw more features of the city. Somehow, he knew that lost in the jungle on another continent, a large, stepped pyramid sat at the center of a ring of successively smaller buildings. Beyond that were two more rings, perfectly, geometrically arranged with what could only be called streets radiating out from the pyramid at the center. Each successive dream revealed more detail, including an entrance at the base of the pyramid.
Once again, Davey awaked suddenly. In his dream, he’d entered through large stone doors which led into the tunnel sloping down underneath the pyramid. The tunnel was longer than the pyramid was wide, and it seemed as if it must lead out past the concentric rings of buildings and under the surrounding jungle.
In the dream, Davey followed the tunnel down to a laboratory. He knew it was a laboratory even though very few of the instruments were familiar to him. Somehow, in his dream, he knew that this was where the aliens had created the life-forms that inhabited Eden.
* * *
Davey was highly disturbed by the dreams—not just the fact that he was having dreams, but because they seemed to be beckoning him to go and find the city in the jungle. He discussed all of this with Betsy, but urged her to keep it quiet. Juno, Molly, and Hans couldn’t know. He was afraid they would see it as abnormal development for an AI.
On the other hand, he could send the details of the gene-code he’d been studying to Charles to see if there was any commonality or anything like it in the previous studies. He wanted to ask the senior AI if he had ever found any indication of cities on Eden, but knew from his history classes that, at least officially, no structures had ever been found anywhere in the Ross 248 system, aside from Alexa’s Oddity.
Betsy said that the official history didn’t mean that nothing had been found. It could have been covered up, or the records of the person who found them could have been deleted before they entered public record. She also told him that the lack of satellite imagery was not proof either. The jungle was so dense in spots that it could hide the research stations themselves if not for the security perimeters.
Davey wasn’t so certain about her cover-up theories. “That’s an awful lot of work to go through,” Davey replied. “After all, there still Alexa’s Oddity; they’re not hiding that.”
“Sure, but civilians found that, not the Patrol. Haven’t you read your Earth history? It’s full of stories of secret societies keeping things from the general public.”
Davey wasn’t sure how to answer that. He’d studied Earth history and it didn’t seem to be quite as full of conspiracies as Betsy thought. Then again, she favored novels and stories filled with spies, secret agents, and evil villains with volcano lairs; of course she’d see everything as a conspiracy.
“Yes, but don’t you think that if something like that existed, Admiral Gordon would have mentioned it? After all, it perfectly supports her decision to leave Eden alone and not terraform it. Evidence of an alien civilization supports that; there would be no reason to cover it up.”
“As if government officials ever need a reason for a cover-up,” Betsy countered.
Davey knew there was no arguing with her when she was in one of these moods. It made being with her rather infuriating, but also kind of interesting at the same time. He supposed that was one reason why they were friends, because he was fascinated by her conspiracy theories. They were so illogical, and as a sentient AI, it was his nature to be logical.
* * *
Davey had sent a copy of the unusual gene sequences to Charles to see if he recognized anything from his own studies, but knew that it could be some time before he would receive a response. Charles’s ship was busy over at Liber, and he was assisting the scientists there with the analysis of the asteroid they’d delivered. AIs could multitask, but they also had to prioritize. It could be several days before Charles got back to him.
So, Davey tended his garden and watched his new seedlings grow. While they could live in the middle of the blighted zone, and didn’t expand it outward, he lost a few of the Earth plants closest to his new hybrids. It wasn’t perfect compatibility, but he was starting to gain some compatibility between his hybrids and the Eden plants. It wasn’t as much as he hoped with Earth life-forms, though, so he needed to find some new gene sequences to test for his next attempt.
He also started looking at maps of Eden. His dreams gave him a sense of where the city was located, but it wasn’t in any coordinate system humans or AIs used. On the other hand, there were only so many ways to divide up a sphere. Davey and Betsy had different ideas on how to figure out the conversion, but eventually his dream impressions lined up with her analysis of landmarks.
They had a target…but no way to confirm it.
When he finally heard from Charles, the AI scientist expressed interest in his latest experiments with hybridizing Earth and Eden genomes and agreed that it might assist in making less-hazardous biomes around the station domes, but cautioned that it still didn’t mean compatibility, or that humans would ever live unprotected on the surface. He also warned Davey to backup his data, his findings, and even his simulation programs.
Charles’s ship had received word of several threats and he warned Davey that an evacuation order for Eden was imminent. “Be prepared to leave” were the final words in his communication.
Davey sought out Betsy and showed her the message from Charles.
“Well, that seals it,” she said. “We have to go. If they’re gonna pull us off this rock, we need to find your city before it’s too late.”
“But how?”
“I’ve got an idea. Meet me at Dad’s clinic at oh-one-hundred tonight. We have to make our move.”
* * *
Both of Betsy’s parents were doctors. Her mother was a neurologist who specialized in the care and maintenance of human brain-computer interfaces. Some scientists also had implants to speed up their interactions with laboratory instruments and operate devices in either hazardous or sterile environments—like Eden—so she had plenty of work there, but mostly in the larger research stations such as Galapagos. Betsy’s father was a general physician who specialized in allergy and infectious diseases. He was on-call and had to travel to remote sites when someone on Eden showed reactions from exposure to the native life-forms or reactions to the sealed environment of the station domes. He was the only such specialist on Eden at present and had unrestricted access to long-range flitters for transportation across the planet’s surface. They were mostly automated, but he’d made sure she knew how to operate one manually—talking about something called “bush doctors” and “bush pilots” on Earth.
Davey wasn’t sure how relevant a comparison that could be, since Eden didn’t have anything so small as a “bush” in its continent-wide jungle. Still, he took her at her word that she could get them to the location in his dreams, so he waited until his parents were asleep before he slipped out of their apartment. He should be able to avoid the security patrols if he was careful not to cross the route they took from offices—around midnight—to the residential sections around 12:30. By the time he got to the clinic, they would’ve finished their rounds and gone back to the central monitoring station.
He didn’t see Betsy anywhere, so he tried the door to the clinic offices and found it unlocked. Stepping inside the darkened room, he noticed a light in the doctor’s office at the back of the complex. There was a sound of somebody opening and closing the door and then the light snapped out.
Davey’s synthetic eyes were sensitive well into the ultraviolet and infrared, not to mention low-light conditions, so he clearly saw Betsy coming out of the physician’s office in the back. “I had to grab Dad’s code remote. We’ll need it to borrow the flitter.”
“Won’t he miss it? What if a patient calls and he needs to go out?”
“He won’t miss it. He’s misplaced these things so many times that he has backups all over. His regular remote is in the doctor bag he keeps beside the front door of our apartment. Mom has a second one. This one is the backup for the backup.”
“But what if he needs his flitter?”
“Don’t be silly. He doesn’t have a personal flitter. He just checks one out from the garage. There’s at least twice as many flitters sitting there as could possibly be used at any given time. It’s called backup and redundancy.”
“And if somebody else notices that he’s taken out a flitter?”
“Now I think you’re just making things up. No one cares. If you’ve got a code remote, you’re authorized to use a flitter.”
If that were the case, this might work. If all it took to be “authorized” was a remote in your possession, there would be no reason for someone to stop or follow them for unauthorized use. The only problem would be when their parents reported them missing. Davey delayed that as long as possible by sending a message to his parents claiming that he had exams and would be in the virtual classroom module all day.
Betsy led the way to the garage. Davey had been there—after all, it was part of standard safety and emergency training—but not often. True to her word, Betsy really did know her way around a flitter. Once they’d taken off, she had him enter the coordinates they’d settled on into the nav computer. They’d studied the location, and knew that it was near the center of a subcontinent-sized island southwest of the continent where Galapagos was located. They would have to cross quite a bit of land, then open ocean, and then more land. Flitters were designed for precisely this sort of travel, and Betsy and her dad had made this length of trip many times. It was time to sit back, catch up on sleep—for Betsy, Davey wouldn’t absolutely require downtime for several more days—and relax until they reached their destination.
They were traveling southwest with the sun, which meant they would likely arrive just after local dawn. On the other hand, it would be midday at Galapagos Station and they would surely be missed by that time. In case of an inquiry to their wrist-comms, they’d each recorded a message for their parents reassuring them that all was well; they were pursuing a scientific inquiry and would be returning the next morning. That way they could spend the daylight hours exploring what they’d hoped would be ruins of an alien city, leave just before nightfall, and return to Galapagos before dawn the next morning. Davey was sure they would both be in trouble. But if they found real evidence of an alien civilization, then perhaps all would be forgiven.
Most of the folks at Galapagos would be asleep for several hours, yet they planned to leave the radio open for emergency calls. They wouldn’t shut off the receiver unless they started receiving messages of a threatening nature telling them to return. Davey didn’t think his parents would do that, but Betsy wasn’t quite so sure. There was always the chance that the Patrol would intervene and decide that they had to return home at all costs. When an emergency message came across the comm several hours later ordering all personnel to report to the nearest Patrol headquarters for emergency evacuation from the surface, they figured it was just an excuse to get them to return to Galapagos.
The message was not specifically directed at them, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t designed to draw them out. Betsy and Davey argued as to how to respond. Was it a real emergency? Davey’s message from Charles suggested it was. Betsy countered that it could be something cooked up by authorities at Galapagos to get them to return. Davey wasn’t entirely comfortable with the decision, and he felt an odd twinge—a tug at his consciousness—but he accepted Betsy’s argument that gathering people and transport off the surface took time, and another twelve hours wouldn’t make much of a difference.
* * *
Dawn was breaking in the sky behind them as the flitter settled into a clearing closest to the coordinates Davey had entered into the navicomp. Davey scanned the clearing to make sure it was clear of ambush predators and nodded his approval. If there were a city here, then it would be just past the stand of trees immediately to their north. Before leaving the flitter, they heard the emergency announcement again—and again, they decided to ignore it. Just to be safe, Davey thought it best that they tie their wrist-comms into the flitter’s central panel for relay. If the emergency was real, then at least they could be tracked. It risked the Patrol arriving and interrupting their mission, but they both admitted that it would be a serious breach of safety protocol to turn off their comms. Ignoring a comm call was forgivable, making one’s self untraceable was not.
They grabbed backpacks filled with water, ration bars, rope, bandages, first aid kits, and a spare rebreather and lightweight skinsuit for Betsy. The latter two were in case she damaged the equipment protecting her from biting insects, plant sap, and pollen, or ingesting anything that could get her sick. Davey’s synthetic body didn’t need any of that, but he made sure he had spare supplies for Betsy as well as emergency energy cells, lubricant paste, and a type of ration bar favored by synthetics to extend their duration in the field, away from power sources and maintenance. They were ready to explore. Now it was time to find out what was out there.
If Davey had been a mature and independent AI, he could have requisitioned an explorer body that would’ve been better suited to making its way through the dense brush and trees separating them from their goal. As it was, he was barely doing better than Betsy and her purely natural body. In fact, if it hadn’t been for her toughsilk skinsuit, she might’ve been cut, bleeding, and likely reacting very badly to the nettles and branches in their way. Davey had brought a long knife—practically a machete—for cutting brush, and he used it to cut as much out of their way as possible. He knew that meant the cut ends of the plants would ooze sap that would then have to be washed off in a decontamination shower later. Accidental exposure wouldn’t be deadly, but could be very uncomfortable. Still, it was worth the risk to ease their way through the heavy foliage. There were alternatives to cutting their way through, but neither of them was about to burn or chemically defoliate the path to a potential alien city.
It took more than an hour to get to Davey’s coordinates. Once again, they heard the All Personnel alert from the Patrol about the evacuation, but this time there was a specific message to the two of them. There were no threats or recriminations, but they were directed to return to a neutral point for Patrol pickup.
They were just so close!
Ahead of them was not a clearing per se, but a thinning of the small plants and trees that blocked ground level. There were tall trees and several large rocky outcroppings in which plants did not grow. They were able to make slightly better time and arrived minutes later…
…but there was no city.
Davey and Betsy scouted the entire area where the vegetation had thinned. It was possible to see more distant landmarks through the trees, and Davey recognized several from his dreams.
This was the place Davey had seen in his dream!
But there was no sign of the city.
They explored and took pictures before stopping for a break. Davey erected a small isolation tent with a brief decon shower. It would allow Betsy to get out of her protective gear long enough to eat. She drank some water, as did Davey. The cool liquid was always welcome for heat dissipation. The two shared notes about what they had found while Betsy ate.
“I really don’t understand this; it was so clear in my dream. There is a mountain over there, an outcropping in the direction of the sunrise, and the small stream running across the clear area. I saw all of those in my dream. The city should be here.”
“Well, it was a dream. Dreams don’t always have to come true,” Betsy said.
“You’re the one who encouraged me to come here and explore.”
“Yes, yes, I know. I did it because the dream was real to you. It was worth checking out, but if there’s nothing here then that’s all it was, just a dream.”
“Then…why did I start having dreams in the first place? Something about the Eden DNA triggered these dreams.”
“Well, then perhaps it was a hidden message in the DNA itself. Except that it’s so old that there’s nothing left for you to find.”
“I was just so sure!” Davey said, plaintively.
“Didn’t you say in the most recent dreams you saw a tunnel underneath the big structure at the center of town? Where would that be?”
“Not far from here, down at the base of the big rock pile. I’m pretty sure that’s natural, not a ruin, but perhaps we can look there again.”
“Okay, we’ll do that, then. Let me finish this ration bar and get another drink of water. I’ll be good to go in a few more minutes.” True to her word, Betsy quickly finished eating and drinking, then resealed her skinsuit and donned her rebreather helmet.
They exited the small bubble tent and Davey collapsed it to put it back into his pack. It shouldn’t have been hard to get to the point that he remembered, but it was a tortuous path with many trees and even more jumbled rocks. Once more, he looked at the rocks closely. They seemed natural, but were those edges a bit too regular?
The two of them explored the area with no more results than before. Davey was heartbroken, and he began to be scared. If they had come all this way because of false dreams, then perhaps he was developing in an abnormal manner. Perhaps he was a faulty AI and needed to be deactivated before he developed into something much, much worse.
Davey didn’t want to disappoint any of his parents.
He didn’t think he was dangerous, but then, he wouldn’t necessarily know that. He felt for the data link back to Juno. It was still there, and it felt warm and solid and loving. He didn’t sense any recrimination or anger. Davey held on as tight as he could—right now it was all he had.
* * *
He was shocked out of his introspection by Betsy’s shout: “Davey, come here! I found something!” Davey rushed around the outcropping to where Betsy was hunched down, looking carefully at the base of some rocks. “There’s something behind here; we need to move this out of the way.”
This was a job for Davey’s synthetic body. He could dig in and lift the rocks with much greater ease than Betsy. It would still take considerable time to clear an opening large enough to pass through, but they could at least see inside.
It was a tunnel…
…and it led down into the earth beneath what would have been the central building in the city of his dreams.
When the opening was large enough to crawl through, Davey and Betsy entered the tunnel and turned on a lamp to look around. The walls were clearly of artificial construction, and Betsy began taking pictures with her wrist-comm. Davey did something similar by commanding his visual system to make a continuous record. At the same time, he sensed for the tether to Juno, and started sending data along that channel as well.
The tunnel sloped downward and seem to be much longer than the extent of the relatively clear area on the surface. He’d seen this in the dream as well; the tunnel extended out of the city and under the surrounding jungle. After they’d walked and photographed for twenty to thirty minutes, the tunnel widened into a large chamber filled with machines and intricate devices. The open area was interrupted by floor-to-ceiling columns covered in what appeared to be some sort of computerized display. Some were dark, but others showed a scrolling text of unusual characters. Between the columns were long tables and glass-enclosed cubicles.
This was a laboratory. One of the working displays showed a continuing display of characters in a single column. Closer inspection showed that the characters repeated—and, in fact, it was the same five characters in seemingly random order.
“This is a DNA sequence!” Davey shouted in recognition. His voice echoed off the walls as he realized that the room was everything he’d dreamed.
They continued to explore and record everything they saw. The two avoided touching anything for fear of disturbing the machines busily performing their unknown functions. This laboratory might very well be the secret to Eden and its life-forms—and perhaps even the Ross 248 system itself.
They’d done it!
Just then, both of their wrist-comms squealed with an emergency alert, and they could hear echoes from back toward the entrance of the tunnel. A voice came over the comm: “Davey! Betsy! Get your stuff and get out of there. Right! Now! There’s a very dangerous situation and we must evacuate you immediately. We can’t wait, we must get you off the surface.”
As the message blasted from their comms, Davey could also hear it inside his head, and he got a sensation of extreme alert and danger over the tether from Juno.
“I think this is serious,” Betsy said.
“I think you’re right. I hope we can come back, but at least we found this, and nobody can take that away from us,” Davey answered her.
They turned and ran back up the sloping tunnel toward the surface. As they approached the entrance, they saw two Patrol members in large, armored combat suits pulling rocks out of the way to make an opening large enough to enter.
“We’re here, we’re here,” Davey broadcast from his comm.
A metallic voice emitted from the one of the two armor suits, “Quickly. We have to get in the shuttle and boost for orbit immediately.”
“What’s this all about?” Betsy asked, but got no answer.
As they exited the tunnel, they saw an orbital shuttle hovering over the tunnel entrance. Davey felt one of the Patrol members grab him about the middle, and saw the other one grab Betsy. Once secure, the suited Patrollers activated jumpjets and flew up to an open bay in the bottom of the shuttle. There was no time for explanation as they were moved gently, but firmly, to acceleration seats and strapped in. As soon as the two suits stepped into their own acceleration brackets, the shuttle boosted for orbit.
* * *
It took a long time to get any answers. Neither Davey nor Betsy got the whole story until they had been reunited with their families on Guardian E.
It seemed that a terror group had suborned Pusher 4 and loaded it with torpedoes containing a toxin that would land in Eden’s oceans and kill all the native life as it permeated the water cycle. The intent was to sterilize the planet—to do what Admiral Gordon forbid almost eighty years ago. They had decided to take matters into their own hands and almost succeeded.
Guardian E intercepted Pusher 4, but the torpedoes had already been launched. Patrol ships intercepted most of the torpedoes, but at the cost of punishing acceleration, which had severely injured any Cerite crewmembers. Several ships were lost…including Pusher 2 with Charles onboard. He had died a hero, even if not a member of the Patrol.
Guardian E entered orbit around Eden and was forced to hunt down the sites where a few torpedoes had landed, and sterilize them with antimatter warheads. That’s what had been about to happen at the laboratory site Davey and Betsy found. A torpedo landed within ten kilometers of their flitter, even as their shuttle boosted for orbit. Guardian E’s missile arrived minutes later. Any more delay, and they’d have been right in the blast zone.
* * *
There was a price to pay, as Davey had known there would be. He testified to the Patrol judge—coincidently, the same JAG officer who’d argued against terraforming Eden eighty years ago—and took the blame for borrowing the flitter and running off on their own. His parents testified that he’d never done anything like it, and Juno was called on to speak about his development. She managed to explain that initiative, curiosity, and imagination were rare in sentient AIs, and that Davey should be appreciated for his actions in discovering the alien laboratory.
Judge Lund argued that they’d endangered Patrol members who’d had to come rescue them, and their actions had resulted in the destruction of an expensive flyer. Hans and Molly pointed out that Davey and Betsy were hardly the only civilians to be pulled off the planet at the last minute; after all, Dr. Oleson had been in the process of treating a patient, and consented to being pulled out of Galapagos only when the patient was stable. The issue of the borrowed flitter was raised, but Mrs. Oleson pointed out that Betsy was trained to operate it, and she did have an authorized code remote. Juno agreed to cover the cost of the flyer.
Finally, the judge was left only with the argument that Davey was underage for an AI. Juno had an answer for that, as well, and stated that with Davey’s discovery of a goal and life’s purpose, he was ready to “graduate” and be declared a mature AI. After all, he just made a major discovery and added a lifetime’s worth of science knowledge about Eden’s biosphere. He’d accomplished something to which human and other AI scientists had dedicated lifetimes.
Judge Lund relented, and Davey was released with the understanding that as a soon-to-be adult AI, he would be held accountable for his actions. Admiral McBane—the senior Patrol officer at Ross 248, and current top official for the system—had followed the proceedings with great interest. He surprised them all by proposing to hold Davey’s maturation ceremony right there on Guardian E. Guardian, the ship’s AI, even consented to attend, via hologram.
The highlight of the ceremony was Juno withdrawing her monitoring link, and Davey experienced absolute mental silence for the first time. A moment later, he felt the inrush of quantum signals heralding his new identity of 17-of-Juno as he connected to Ross’s Sentient AI Network—SAIN—for the first time. His first congratulatory message was from Guardian and then the other AIs within comm range as they asked him if he had chosen a name.
“Darwin, I think,” he responded, electronically and verbally, “after the scientist.”
“Welcome, Darwin,” Hans told him. “We’re proud of you, son.”
* * *
A few weeks later, Darwin, Betsy, Admiral McBane, several other ranking Patrol members, and his human parents stood on the rim of a large smoking crater. The hunt for toxin torpedoes had ended, and the small amount of residual radiation had faded.
Darwin looked at a navigation computer and then indicated a point a third of the way into the crater. “There is where it was,” he said bitterly.
Darwin was disappointed, but he and had Betsy discussed it later that evening.
“One lab wouldn’t have been enough,” he told her.
“We found one, we can find the others. You do the science stuff; I’ll do the archeology.”
“We’ll do the exploration.”
“Agreed, partner. Now go to sleep and dream of the next location,” Betsy said, and laughed.
Darwin just nodded his head in agreement.
The next location. Yes, let’s find it.
The year 2669 / 86 AA
This story takes place three years after “Echoes of a Beating Heart,” but back in the solar system on the dwarf planet Pluto. Pluto is owned and operated by SAIN and is home to massive computer systems hosting virtual realties dedicated to the more hedonistic pursuits. Outside of Pluto, advanced virtual realities are prohibited because they are simply too dangerous. (Is life boring? Plug in and live your dreams!) Pluto also hosts a large cryogenics industry, taking credits from and then freezing the old, and sick. It is not uncommon for the wealthy from throughout the solar system to journey to Pluto, enjoy the virtual realities of their choice, and, when their bodies fail, join the ranks of the cryogenically frozen. Many humans journey to Pluto, but few return.