Humans are Weird, a Mash Up, Pt. 5
Twas the night before Christmas, and all through your feed
You scrolled down and down, with so little heed
For the posts and the gifs, flicking by on the screen
Only passing by, tough little by what was seen
Cause late is the hour, and darkened is the light
On the porch , in the hall, and the desk, this Christmas night
There you have sat in your bed, hour after hour
Watching slowly as your phone loses power
And along comes a message, a blip, a note
Of our hero Karry, alight on a dust mote.
Hello, there everyone! As an early Christmas present, here is part five to our story. On our way to the ‘home planet’ as it were, and one step further on Karry’s journey. So Merry Christmas! Enjoy the read!
~~~
The sleek pistol bucked in Karry’s hands emitting a sharp whine, and the mass of plaster and wire at the far end of the firing range disintegrated into minuscule pieces, and the centimeter long projectile vaporized itself against the force-field protecting the bulkhead.
“Good shot,” a disembodied voice said, as Karry slid the protective goggles from her eyes as the last fragments fell to the deck, “If slightly to the left.”
“So long as it hits, it doesn’t seem to matter much,” she observed, laying the weapon down carefully. “That thing is awesome.” Other weapons sat prominently in the racks behind what would have been the ranger master’s desk, and Karry eyed them wistfully.
“So, is your favorite still the fletchette gun,” chuckled the ancient machine from the intercom’s speakers, “or has the pulser taken better?” For the last few days it had taken the immense ship, a former troop transport of sorts, Mark, a sentient alien machine from a far off sun, had been show casing various small arms of the now-extinct Concordiat of Manticore’s armed forces, and the ship wrecked human had taken to them with a sort of fiendish delight.
“Nah,” she replied, “That one is a real beast to play with.” As she spoke, the various weapons on display retracted into recessed storage panels, and the lights above the range began to dim to nothingness. A robotic servitor came to retrieve the pulser and goggles, and she handed them over. “Still, why didn’t you show me this one first? It was a lot easier to use, at least.”
“It took longer to modify for your use,” Mark replied, as another servitor guided her out of the room into the corridor. “All of the weapons had to be; the Manticorians had different hands and limbs from humans, and using them in their original state would have proved overly difficult, and a weapon that one does not know how to use is one that is dangerous to its user. Modifying them was simpler and safer.”
“Hmm.” Overall, the trip had really improved from its beginning. Before, on the distant outpost now three days behind them, the Bolo had absolutely no idea how to deal or even interact with the strange being that had drifted into his ‘care’... or imprisonment, which ever was decided on in the end. But from accidentally locking Karry into a room, he had gone to careful watchfulness, obviously trying to keep anything from hurting Karry. Both physically, and mentally.
And Karry still struggled with that. Every few hours, she would wander her way to the observation blister that Mark had led her to after the first attack had left her bouncing around the corridors and troop compartments in a state of panic, trying to find anyplace that didn’t seem to close in on her. From there she could look into the vastness of space, and at times see the steadily approaching star whose child they sought. She had spent most of a ‘night’ there in the beginning, and the only other respite from the attacks was, apparently, the arms range.
Mark had seemed pleased with it, if only as an excuse to finally share his vast military knowledge with someone close enough to converse with... and didn’t already posses the same. While she had torn apart ballistics dummies and targets by the crate load, he had gone on and on over the history of the weapon’s development, what had changed between models, and the various battles that had prompted the changes. She hadn’t really listened, but Mark had no issues. He know that mere organics didn’t have the same clarity of memory as one of silicon circuits and molecular bytes, he just simply enjoyed sharing it.
They wandered down the corridor towards the bridge, and another, different voice spoke up, a soft, cool soprano and a stark contrast to Marks deep baritone.
“We will be orbit over the planet Sphinx within the hour, Karry,” and she nodded. The ship had it’s own AI, which shared its name: Websin, which according to Mark was the name of an ancient war hero. While nowhere near the same capacity of Mark or other Bolos (so he claimed at least), it had also taken an affinity to Karry, if only as the first organic it had ferried anywhere in millennia.
“Okay, does that mean we’re almost done here?” Supposedly, she was off to see what passed for the governing body of the remnants of the Manticorian’s artificial creations. Mark and Websin refused to say anymore, which lead Karry to think that they didn’t know much more beyond it than she, so she had just gone with it. At least she got to see some cool guns and toys.
“Almost, Karry,” Websin replied as they approached the last corridor, “At least, with the trip here.”
The bridge doors slid open, and Karry and the servitor entered. Slightly cramped and darkly lit, various strange chairs sat at the various panels and desks arrayed around the holotank. The holotank, a pool-like depression in the forward center of the bridge, currently showed an image of the planet Sphinx itself: a collection of emerald green continents crossed with coppery mountains, and topped with massive ice caps to the north and south, half shadowed in its own bulk. Those shadows faintly glowed with spiderwebs of light, branching from a near invisible seashore toward its interior, glowing like cracks in a mud-caked crystal ball. In days before, the tank had shown a graphic representation of the star system itself, a binary set of stars, and the many shells of orbital platforms around them and their planets and asteroid belts, dots and lines upon a black back drop of empty space.
Karry slid into on of the chairs to the left of the tank, and watched the diagrams on the display in front of her as the ship began its slow approach. She had learned quite a bit about the ships systems, though a lot still confused her. But she could tell by the increase in the ship’s particle shielding strength that they may not be stopping at the orbit. She sat at the edge of her seat in anticipation. This was gonna be cool.
Mark paused in his careful watch over the human as a query came from Websin, and turned his attention to the transport’s awareness. Yes? The reply came quickly.
We are being hailed by Command.
Then why not put them on the bridge communications?
They wish to converse with Us... privately.
If Mark had eyes like a human, they would have narrowed. But Command was trustworthy; what ever their base intentions were as created by the Manticorians, they would not turn such tactical scheming toward an nonthreatening being as the human. But still worried. Very well.
The communication was unhindered by distance, and a channel request was quickly sent, and opened. Although it was simply data, a variation of characters via light and radio, it still seemed as though a voice to the two cybernetic beings.
Unit 36/G-0104/MRK and MCNS Websin, the ‘voice’ said, we wish to inform you as to the current situation as to the human, and of our own situation.
Yes? The two replied, Please continue.
There is a degree of division between factions as to our course of action, Command admitted, the unified voice of dozens of AIs, split into three ‘voices’ as it were.
The first and largest agrees with the initial conclusion you yourselves first came to when contact and communication was first initiated: the Human must be returned home. At the very least, an attempt should be made, out of simple decency and ethics, according to the programming and intentions of the Creators. Unfortunately, that very confusion had earned some backlash.
The second faction argues that attempting to return the Human could reveal ourselves and our charges to the Enemy, and that it could conceivably be that the Enemy has engineered this and any hundred of variations to lure us out of hiding. Naturally, given the illogical nature of this argument, and the calculated impossibility and improbability, this is the smallest faction, and is only put forth to aid in solving the issue. It is the third faction that deems the biggest threat to the Human’s well being.
And it? Mark asked, a microsecond passing as his awareness pondered the cause.
The third faction is composed mostly of the emergent AIs, those whose sentience was of accident and chance. They played the smallest part in the struggle that destroyed what we were before, and have since formed their conception of the Manticorians into a semi-religious view. They challenge our interpretation of the Creators’ intentions for us, our purpose and duty, and accuse us of intentionally limiting their rise and spread. There was a pause.
The Manticorians, the Creators, and even all organic sentient life is considered holy, almost God-like to some of the Emergents. They wish to keep the Human, to worship and to praise, and challenge our place as the designated Command.
This was troubling. Mark could tell that the situation had, quite unknowingly, led to a dangerous field. If played wrong, the religion game and the effort to aid Karry in her return home could spark a war between machines, one which the Emergents were totally unable to win, and one Command would be unwilling to start. Such a conflict could spell disaster for the various peoples under their protection, and certainly leave Command unable to protect them from a future Enemy.
But Command had to have a plan: they would not have informed Mark and Websin otherwise.
And what do you believe is the best choice? Mark asked, hoping that there would be an answer.
We will play their game. The smugness was evident over the com, and dawning realization came to Mark. Land at these coordinates, Websin, and try not to scorch the landing pad too badly.
Karry had barely stood up to watch their planetary approach, unaware of the lightning fast conversation between the AIs over the still-vast space between them, when Mark spoke.
“This planet, as I have explained, was once set aside for it’s native people,” he said. “Yet was still largely colonized before the war.”
“Yeah,” Karry replied, “You mentioned it.”
“Before conflict could come to this region, many of the Manticorian people were evacuated, and those who stayed behind eventually perished,” the Bolo continued distractedly, as if he hadn’t heard her. But he had. “But the cities and infrastructure remain, if overgrown and somewhat deteriorated. Many AIs and others moved in, repopulated as it were.”
Karry frowned. She wasn’t sure where Mark was going with this, but she was sure that he would get there eventually.
“We are going to take a more scenic route than normal,” Websin said, a slight smile hiding in her voice, “So if you want you can head to the observitory blister to see the trip down.” A beep sounded, and a dot of light glowed on Karry’s wrist.
The artificial limb had included a few extra features, and the miniature computer was one of them. As Karry tapped the light, a small holoprojector pulled up the ship’s map that Websin had sent, with the route to the blister highlighted in green. “You can go yourself if you want. The servitor will remain here.”
“Really??” Karry grinned widely. The two AI’s hadn’t let her go anywhere ‘by herself’ out of worry that something would trigger a panic attack, but maybe they thought that something like the regular trips to the blister would be easy enough for Karry to handle herself without an episode. Or they were finally pulling back the somewhat-patchy cotton balls they had kept around her: no babysitter or foster parent back on Earth would have let her around weapons!
But the two AI’s had been sure, after the (slightly) embarrassing episode of her first two nights on the outpost, to make sure that she knew exactly how to get out of a room, where to go for food, and how to get places, usually by having a cleaning remote or servitor follow her around like a puppy. And even though the route was clearly marked, and they could follow her using the ship’s camera’s, she could use this opportunity to explore the ship a little.
Provided a panic attack didn’t set in, of course.
“On my way!” She grinned, closing the map and heading for the doors, “’See’ you there!”
~
The massive craft, large enough to embark several Bolos and an entire armored assault battalion of Manticorian Marines and almost a kilometer and a half long, leveled its fiery descent smoothly, incandescent gases dissipating and outer plating cooling slowly in the moist forest air. Karry watched as the sky, at first brightened by the Websin’s passage from star scattered darkness to white flame settled into a deep lightening blue, and the land below drew up. The massive trees of the planet’s forest, stretching to the horizon, drew closer, and Karry gasped as what had at first seemed like larger trees, then hills came into closer view.
Massive towers covered in vines and foliage, emerged from the greenery. Several of their number had collapsed, weather from water or weather Karry could not tell, but their brothers stood still, like mountains. As the Websin closed, their true scale dawned on her, because they towered far above them, creating a canyon as the cities’ former highways and parks. They were so large, each could have been a city of its own.
“This is nothing like home,” Karry whispered, eyes wide at the sight through the glass.
“And what was home like?” Mark’s voice was just a quiet, as if to lend the towers more majesty.
“A city called New York,” Karry replied. “So many people, I felt lost just wandering the streets.” She shook her head. “Sure we had skyscrapers, the Empire State or the Freedom Tower, and Central Park, but...” She marveled at the sight again. “Nothing like this. If it wasn’t green, it was grey, and some places you could never see the sun, or even trees. But this, it just dwarfs it.” The towers rose above them now, and Karry leaned into the outwardly domed glass, trying to look ahead. “Its just... incredible.”
“That it is,” Mark replied. “That it is.”
The Websin slowly glided over what was probably the only maintained green in the city, a well manicured ‘lawn’, covered in many places in what looked like little grey bushes or clumps of grasses... but only around the leviathan bulks of at least three other Bolos, their massive turrets pointed away from the troop ship. Other, smaller machines dotted their decks, and grouped among the plants below as the ship settled in an oddly clear section of the field, and Karry sighed. Time to go and met the hosts, she thought.
~
The landing bay doors slowly, if loudly, opened, and Karry felt very self conscious walking down the vast ramp next to something - or someone - as large as Mark. But he didn’t move til she did, matching her slow walk down with the quite turn of massive treads. But at the bottom, Karry paused, blinking in the bright sunlight and shivering slightly in the slight chill of what was apparently mid morning, and stared at the group that had approached to greet her.
The first group was fairly normal... if normal meant eight limbs with various attachments and tools or hands or other manipulating appendages and oddly faceted ‘heads’. The ‘robots’ or what ever must have been closely designed from the Manticorian body itself, with two pairs of dog-like legs set one after another, and two wildly disproportionate pairs of arms on a wide torso covered in some sort of ceremonial robe. This group seemed to have its attention split between her and the other group, however, which to Karry seemed far from normal.
The second group was, in fact, the little grey ‘clumps’ she had seen from the blister, but were definitely not plants. If anything, they looked like cats, if cats had six legs, not four, and if they had hands, and if they did not seem to be staring at her as if she was a moon. She, of course stared back.
For a second, nothing happened. Mark had paused when she did, and the field was silent except for the wind, and then...
A single cat-thing began trotting slowly toward Karry, crossing the distance before coming to a stop at her feet. It sat there fore a second, staring into her eyes while siting back on it’d hind limbs and brushing its whiskers with it’s four fingered hand-paws. Almost unthinkingly, she knelt down and looked closer, wondering how something so alien could look so similar, and so friendly. And then, the little thing stopped cleaning it’s whiskers, and slowly reached a hand - it was definitely a hand - to touch her on the cheek. She let it, reaching up to cup its hand in hers, and it crooned to her, bringing up the other hand to reach around her neck, and unthinkingly, she scooped up the little critter and carefully squeezed it back, as the little body began buzzing in an unmistakable purr. For a moment, she closed her eyes and enjoyed the nearly human contact, before opening her eyes to find almost another hundred others surrounding her and crooning with the one in her arms, as if they were welcoming her to their home.
“I see we do not need to make too much of an introduction,” Mark’s voice rose over the sound of the creature’s crooning. “They don’t seem to need one.”
~~~
So ends part five. If any of you have read David Weber’s Honorverse, you may recognize the treecats (link here http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Treecat ) of his work. Awesome little things.
Be preapared for tomorrow, I hope, where part six comes in. Provided Christmas doesn’t take up too much of my time.
See you then!
