Across the Void Read online

  “Commander Knox,” the AI said, interrupting May’s lovely vision, “it is not safe to expose your skin to the UV light for an extended period of time.”

  “Every party’s got a pooper,” she whispered quietly to herself.

  May donned the clean-room suit. Unlike NASA’s extravehicular activity, or EVA, suits, the clean-room suit was more like something one would wear scuba diving—skintight and made of a thick, rubbery neoprene-type material. Its outer surface was crisscrossed with hair-thin fiber-optic lines. The helmet was also formfitting, and the gel packs inside it automatically adjusted to May’s head, molding around it. The visor glass curved under her chin as the helmet and suit sealed around her neck. The fiber lines embedded in the suit fabric lit up red, and the function display appeared on the inside of her helmet glass with the words “Initiating decontamination.”

  Convincing herself that she wasn’t going to suffocate in the claustrophobic suit, May watched the color of the fiber lines slowly change to white, indicating decontamination.

  “Clear for entry,” the AI said. “The clean room vault is an antigravity chamber with no life support.”

  “Why?”

  “Exposure to gravitational pull and oxygen accelerates processor aging.”

  “Right. Granny’s saggy tits,” May said under her breath.

  “Please repeat, Commander Knox. I was not able to hear that.”

  “I said, let’s do this.”

  “I will use your helmet camera to view the system. Activating that now.”

  The camera viewfinder screen appeared on May’s helmet glass.

  “Are you ready, Commander Knox?”

  May nodded.

  “Please hold on to the safety bars. I am going to equalize pressure and gravity between this room and the vault.”

  May held the bars as she became weightless and the glass on her helmet darkened. The airlock door opened, and May floated into a perfect sphere as large as a cathedral, with a seamless, semitransparent glass wall. As dark as her helmet glass was, the unfiltered sunlight in the room was still painfully bright. May recalled the myth of Icarus and his doomed flight to the sun as she hung in the brilliance, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

  Behind the glass, an elaborate web of what looked like black plant roots snaked over the entire surface, branching out in every direction. May assumed that was the organic matter as it was interlaced with fiber-optic lines similar to the ones on her suit.

  “You have a very interesting brain,” May said. “What’s it made of?”

  “It’s a singular organism made up of animal neurons and cellular plant matter, bound by a highly conductive plasma and fiber optics that connect it to the ship’s circuitry. It’s the most advanced system of its kind, capable of high levels of parallelism and versatility.”

  “Not so artificial, is it, your intelligence?”

  “I’ve never thought of it that way. My creators told me the word artificial was added to create a sense of separation from human intelligence.”

  “Or a sense of superiority. Human beings are a bit fragile that way.”

  “You don’t seem fragile, Commander.”

  “Thank you. I am feeling stronger, despite appearances.”

  May took a closer look at the processor organism. She thought she could feel a subtle vibration, as if it were attempting to make contact.

  “Speaking of appearances, is the organism supposed to look like this? So dark?”

  “Yes, the black color means it is healthy and fully functional. White indicates damage or death.”

  May chuckled. “What’s next?”

  “Activating maintenance portals.”

  What looked like a hundred circular windows, all a yard in diameter and distributed evenly, silently dilated open. Inside were translucent disks that glowed either red or white. The vast majority were red.

  “Each portal screen has a status light. Red indicates complete malfunction. White indicates partial function. Blue indicates full function. Please scan all portals for me.”

  “Copy.”

  May scanned the portals with a wide angle.

  “There are no blues and very few whites. That can’t be good, right?”

  “Life support failure is imminent without immediate repairs.”

  May trembled, imagining the ship going completely dark and becoming her own frozen mausoleum for eternity.

  “You will need to work quickly.”

  “Ready.”

  “How much life-support time is left in your suit?”

  May looked at the function display projected on the inside of the helmet glass. “One hour,” she reported.

  “I will prioritize critical systems.”

  Some of the portal screens began flashing.

  “Go to the flashing screens first. I will give you reboot codes for each. Enter them as quickly as you can, but carefully. Two incorrect entries will shut it down for sixty seconds.”

  “Got it. One small thing: I’ve never been in this room before—actually, more accurately, I was never allowed—and I have no idea how to operate the suit thrusters.”

  “They are operated by look and intention.”

  “Really? I only need to think about where I want to move and the thruster will send me there?”

  “You also need to be looking at your destination. The system tracks your pupillary focal points for targeting and matches that with brainwaves associated with human desire.”

  “I’ll be damned,” May said.

  “Condemned by the Christian God to suffer eternal punishment in hell? I don’t see the relevance of—”

  “Figure of speech,” May said. “There are many more where that came from, so don’t worry about translating.”

  “Affirmative.”

  May stared down at one of the flashing screens and focused on wanting to go there. She was shocked when the thrusters quickly responded and she glided to it. “First portal.”

  “Using the touch screen, enter the following code . . .”

  May spent the next thirty minutes flying around the sphere and entering codes, but she wasn’t moving fast enough. Antigravity work was a bitch, and it didn’t help that she was starving and dying of thirst. Also, the suit’s cooling system wasn’t keeping up with the UV radiation, and she was sweltering. She could only imagine what a complete disaster it would be if she were to pass out in there.

  “I’ve just taken an atmosphere reading in the infirmary and clean-room entry area, and life support levels are decreasing at a rate of 5 percent per minute,” the AI reported, adding insult to injury.

  “But I’ve restored a third of the red portals.”

  “It’s possible the systems they control require mechanical repairs.”

  May looked at her suit’s life-support clock. Twenty-five minutes. Recharging it was moot if the whole ship was about to die. To reinforce this, she noticed that some of the branches of organic matter were changing from black to an unhealthy-looking dark gray.

  “Commander Knox, I am concerned about your suit power. Based on the time you’ve been working, you have less than ten minutes of life support.”

  “If I don’t get this done now, I’m dead anyway.”

  “Recharging the suit is more logical. We know when it will die. We don’t know when the ship will die.”

  “The root things . . . the organic matter . . . look at them,” she said, deflecting. She trained her helmet camera on the rapidly graying branches.

  “Accelerated decrepitude. I’m afraid what you’re doing will not stop or reverse that.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We need to try to preserve the matter that is still viable.”

  “How?” May yelled angrily.

  “I can reboot the entire system. Theoretically, that would reset all the portals and restore those that aren’t permanently damaged.”

  “Why the hell didn’t we just do that in the first place?” May growled.

  “System rebooti
ng is only done in dock, with no crew. It involves restarting all systems, including life support. The ship will go dark for at least five minutes, but that is never an exact number. And if the reboot fails, I cannot do it again.”

  May could feel her own rapidly dwindling life support. The panting she’d been experiencing before was now almost gasping. She had to get out of there.

  “Reboot the system . . . after I get out of here.”

  “Commander Knox, that is very dangerous. You could be killed.”

  “I’m dying . . . anyway. Have a little oxygen in the suit. When I get to . . . vestibule, I will connect suit to charger and you will . . . initiate restart. That’s an order.”

  “Affirmative.”

  May flew to the vestibule door. The AI opened it, and May floated inside. As the airlock was sealed and pressure was equalized to the main vessel, she drifted to the floor and landed in a sitting position next to the suit-charging unit. She felt as if she were trying to breathe through a cocktail straw. She fumbled with the charger cables but finally got them attached. Her breathing returned to normal, but she shivered as the sweat in her suit began to freeze.

  “It’s freezing,” she yelled through chattering teeth.

  “Ship atmosphere down to 18 percent.”

  May’s suit was charging, but she’d gained only a small percentage of juice. The visor display was not functioning with low power, so she had no idea how much time she’d gained being attached to the charger. If she waited any longer, the ship would completely lose power, and the AI would lose the ability to reboot anything.

  “Reboot system now.”

  “What is your life support level—”

  “Just do it,” she barked.

  “Initiating system reboot in five, four, three, two, one.”

  The ship plunged into darkness and freezing cold. May could feel the heat leaving her body like air rushing out of a balloon. Every muscle in her core constricted painfully, then shook so hard it rattled her skeleton. She had to clamp her jaw down and hold it fast for fear of breaking teeth. Before losing consciousness, the only thing May could hear was the sound of what might be her last shallow breaths.

  7

  “Commander Knox, are you reading me?”

  When May came to, she was lying on the floor of the clean-room vestibule, half-frozen but able to draw breath. Her helmet was no longer sealed to her suit. She clawed it off and spent several minutes sucking wind. Her head was aching, and the pins and needles were back in her hands and feet. The childhood memory of her mother dragging her nearly lifeless body from a pond rang like a bell in her mind, and she wished her mother could be there to wrest her from the clutches of yet another grim tale.

  “That was a little too close for comfort,” May said. “How did the reboot go?”

  “One hundred percent successful. I am fully reconnected with the ship’s network.”

  She sighed in relief. “That’s great news. Have you assessed ship damage?”

  “Yes; the fusion reactor is nominally functional, outputting power at approximately 15 percent of its normal capacity. The tremors we’ve been feeling are being caused by the two Q-thruster engines operating out of synchronization. I am theorizing that is due to poor power flow from the reactor.”

  “Can we fix it?”

  “I am attempting to diagnose the source of the problem. When that becomes clear, we will be able to determine the course of repair.”

  “I’m guessing we’re going to need help from NASA. What’s the status with comms?”

  “Our antenna array is down, so we are neither transmitting nor receiving. I am also working on diagnosing the source of that problem.”

  May was starting to feel sick again. “Are you able to see the rest of the ship? Any signs of life?”

  “I have restored a small percentage of my video cameras, but many are still offline. Command consoles and other onboard interfaces are inactive. And my motion sensors are not yet operational. With what I can see, I have not detected any other crew members.”

  “And the landing vehicles?”

  “I have not yet connected with that part of the ship.”

  May didn’t want to say what she was thinking because it was unthinkable. She found it hard to believe anyone else could be on the ship and go completely undetected, even when it had gone dark. But she promised herself she would not go down that rabbit hole of miserable speculation without actual evidence. Dealing with reality was taxing enough, and filling her belly with something, anything, other than nutrigels and sugar wafers, was way overdue.

  “Join me for a cheeseburger?”

  “I’d be delighted.”

  With some apprehension, she headed to the galley. Thankfully, the reboot had restored some internal power, so the ship no longer resembled an inky black labyrinth of doom. However, compared to what she remembered of the Hawking II, it still felt like a dismal, postapocalyptic version of itself. The once-shimmering wall panels and gleaming metal floors had a grimy patina in the dim light, as if the ship had been abandoned and adrift for decades. May found the galley in a similar state as the infirmary, with some of the food stores torn open and trash strewn about. But, like the rest of the ship, it was eerily quiet. She looked out the observation window.

  “I know our nav systems are down, but where the hell are we? Do you have any idea?”

  “Unfortunately, the star fields 621,000 miles in all directions are unidentifiable, so I am unable to accurately determine our location at this time.”

  “Or how long we’ve been adrift, no doubt,” May added.

  “Correct.”

  May shook her head.

  “We could be anywhere,” she said, “drifting at high velocity for God knows how long . . . FUBAR.”

  “Fucked up beyond all recognition,” the AI said dryly.

  May smiled. “It’s nice when you don’t talk like a robot.”

  “I can be trained to speak any way you like. These are my default settings.”

  “I can make you a proper Brit?”

  “Of course. Which regional dialect?”

  “Bournemouth. Southern Coast.”

  “Right. How d’you like the sound of this, then?”

  The AI had the accent down, but the tone was unnervingly electronic, and it made May feel homesick rather than at home.

  “I think I prefer your natural voice—but maybe with a little more relaxed way of saying things.”

  “No problemo, sister. It’s all good.”

  “I said relaxed, not American,” May laughed.

  “Sorry—American colloquial English is cited most often as a relaxed way of speaking.”

  “I’m not surprised. Hey, I have an idea. Just listen to how I say things and try to speak like me.”

  “I can do that,” the AI said. “Assimilation is my specialty.”

  “On that note, do you have an actual name?”

  “ANNI. It’s an acronym for Artificial Neural Network—”

  “That won’t do. Annie was the name of the CPR dummy I had far too much intimate contact with in flight training. May I give you a more suitable name?”

  “You’re the commander of this vessel. It’s within your authority—”

  “Talking like a robot again.”

  “Sorry. Would you like to pick a name for me?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  May gave it some careful thought. After all, she thought she might be naming her last-ever friend. Then she flashed back to her mother standing by the pond, arms crossed, quietly concerned but not panicked—the perfect foil to her rattling saber.

  “I believe I’ll call you Eve.”

  “Eve. The book of Genesis. Created from the rib of Adam—”

  “None of that rubbish, please. My mom’s name was Eve. She was a bit like you: relentlessly practical and obliged to relentlessly keep me out of harm’s way.”

  “I’m flattered. Thank you, Commander Knox.”

  “Yeah, this works both ways,
Eve. ‘Commander Knox’ is too stiff. From now on, I’d like you to call me May. Short for Maryam.”

  “Maryam. Arabic for Mary, mother of Jesus, or Isa, as written in the Koran.”

  “Really? That’s where my name comes from? I always thought I was named after Mom’s stuffy old aunt.”

  “You might have been named after a stuffy old aunt, but that’s the name’s origin.”

  “I quite like it now.” May grinned, thinking of how clever her mother had always been, infusing her life with lovely bits of dash. “Okay, enough small talk, Eve. You are now my official second-in-command, not just some piece of equipment. We are a team. Got it?”

  “Affirm—I mean, yes, I do, May.”

  “Outstanding. Now then, let’s get back to addressing unpleasant subjects, like the ship being doomed, et cetera. One thing that might help us save her is if we knew what the hell happened to her in the first place. Do you have any data?”

  “It seems you are not the only one dealing with memory loss. Just after the reboot, I attempted to access ship log data. As you know, I am programmed to record the entire voyage. This includes storing raw data feeds and capturing audiovisual records with my camera network. Ship log data recording ceased on December 15, 2067, and was not restored until I did so after the reboot.”

  “Is it possible that your memory loss was caused by whatever damaged the ship?”

  “Yes, but the condition of my processors, although poor, would make a complete loss of data unlikely. There are several redundancies in place to safeguard against this.”

  “Surely Mission Control has backups,” she said hopefully.

  “All data is constantly streamed to Mission Control. If we are able to reestablish contact, they will be able to pinpoint the problem.”

  “Let’s remove the word if from our vocabulary, Eve. When we reestablish communication.”

  “Of course, with the caveat that I am not attempting to convey certainty with a lack of empirical data.”

  “That’s fine. I’m just a bit short on optimism. And if my goddamn brain would work properly, I might be able to help us solve some of our problems. It’s just such a mess up there right now.”

  “If you’d like,” Eve said, “I can show you the mission briefing video and give you access to the vessel walk-through programs. I researched our medical database and found that strong cues can help restore memories after brain trauma. The mission briefing covers the mission parameters and personnel, as well as a brief overview of the research of Dr. Stephen Knox, on which . . .”