Bored in deep space - Novelisation -
Chapter 12 - TAMA (5)
I woke up from the strangely realistic dream.
My fingers clawed at my chest, a frantic scrabbling motion against the fabric of my shirt. I wasn't looking for a button or a tear; I was searching for an anchor, a single point of data to ground my wildly careening consciousness. My fingertips brushed against the small, impossibly dense bar of metal. The silver clip. It was still there. I slumped back against the cold, hard floor, a ragged, shuddering gasp of air tearing from my lungs. The solidity of it, the cool outline of it was the only thing separating me from the madness of the past few minutes. The simulation of a life lived, the shattering of that illusion, the abrupt return to the metallic bowels of Astellion. Time had become a meaningless slurry. Minutes, hours, days -- I had no frame of reference for how long I had been down here, or even how I got to this point. My arrival in this techno-maze was a hole in my memory, a blank cassette tape in a crucial part of the movie.
I pushed myself to my feet, my legs unsteady as a newborn fawn's. The simulation had failed because I'd recognised the inconsistency. That was the key. They had attempted to build a perfect prison for my mind, a recreation of a life so mundane it couldn't be questioned, but they made a mistake. They'd left a ghost in the machine -- a memory of a power that wasn't supposed to be there. And that told me Calliope was definitely down here. The mere fact they had resorted to such an elaborate, invasive tactic to dissuade me was the most potent proof I could have asked for. It only hardened my conviction to continue.
I was on the right path.
The labyrinth was a wound in the planet, a gash of metal and shadow that seemed to defy every law of architecture I knew, both from my 21st century life and the functional, if brutalist, design of the old SV-Eclipse. I moved forward, drawn by an instinct I couldn't name, deeper into the industrial abyss. The structure itself felt hostile, an active antagonist in my journey. The further I ventured, the more it seemed to decay, not from rust or disuse, though there was plenty of that too, but from a fundamental loss of purpose.
A hallway would narrow to the width of my shoulders, forcing me to turn sideways, the rough metal walls scraping against the cheap fabric of my suit. The next corridor would be a cavernous hall, wide enough to fit the entire Eclipse through, its ceilings lost in a gloom so profound my meagre human eyes couldn't pierce it. Doors were carved into the walls at impossible angles -- some were upside-down, their handles defying gravity, while others were positioned flush with the floor, leading to nothing but solid, unyielding metal when pried open. Staircases sometimes twisted back on themselves, leading to the very landing they had just departed from. It was a facsimile, a clumsy copy of a blueprint the builders could no longer read. It felt less like architecture and more like a physical manifestation of dementia, a grand, sprawling mausoleum built by minds that had forgotten the rules of their own existence.
I stopped. I could see it, what the old machines were fighting against. It wasn't some great evil or cosmic event, they were fighting against their own failing data cores and corrupted memories. I witnessed with my very own eyes the reason they took my Calliope. I could see the end of their long slumber, their journey through time and history to get to this point. This place, this sprawling techno-nightmare was the mother about to die during childbirth.
And I had come to stop it.
I stumbled into a larger space, a pocket of relative order in the chaos. It was a small, enclosed office, perched on a raised metal platform like a crow's nest. A wall of reinforced, plexiglass-like material offered a panoramic view into a chasm of staggering proportions. A factory floor, or what's left of it. Below me stretched an assembly line of colossal, sleeping machines. The conveyor belts vast, paved highways of rust-red metal. It was a place of ghosts. The factory floor below had been abandoned, probably since long before my own species discovered fire.
Crane-like arms were frozen mid-extension, their manipulator claws hanging uselessly in the still air. Conveyor belts, wide enough for a ground vehicle, were slick with a fine layer of red dust. And on them lay the factory's final, unfinished products. I peered down, my breath fogging the clear panel. They were machines. Four-legged constructs, eerily reminiscent of the rovers I had spent a week commanding on the surface, but larger, more complex, their bodies studded with plates of strange, unidentifiable alloys. These might have been the chassis of the old machines, or at least a precursor to them, waiting for a soul that had never arrived. The place wasn't just a factory; it was a nursery.
My gaze swept the factory floor, drinking its history, a landscape of dead industry, and a profound sense of loneliness washed over me. To build something on this scale, to forge machines this complex, required an energy, a belief, a purpose. But as I had already learnt, that purpose disappeared of their own volition, leaving these old machines to define a new purpose they never fully found. What had it been like, in those final days, when the light of creation began to dim? Had the workers here simply put down their tools and walked away, leaving the great machinery to cool and the half-formed children to rust? The thought of that long, quiet failure was more heartbreaking than any catastrophe. The place had not been slain; it had been forgotten.
It was in this sombre reflection, as I stared down into the cradle of a dead civilisation, that a sound shattered the silence. It wasn't the groan of settling metal or the whispers of the wind through some unseen fissure. This wasn't the start of some boss battle where I needed to kill a metallic Frankenstein's monster to proceed. It was a digital chime, crisp and clear. Besides me, set into the console of the observation deck, a monitor, covered in eons of dust, flickered to life. I flinched back, every muscle tensing.
The screen was a blizzard of chaotic, white and grey static. The kind of static I'd only ever seen on ancient cathode-ray-tube televisions late at night, a visual representation of cosmic background radiation. But layered over the seething storm of signal noise was text. A string of clean white characters, utterly devoid of font or personality.
They formed a question. An accusation. A challenge.
The words in the static had no inflection, no emotion, but the question itself felt like a heavy weight pressing on my chest. It was an interrogation from a god, and I, an average man, was the sole defendant. A part of me, the cynical corporate troubleshooter, wanted to craft a response that was diplomatic, strategic, a way to negotiate without conceding. But that was a Noah Lee from a lifetime ago. I didn't have the energy or the care to respond in such a cordial manner.
What came out was the raw truth. The simple feelings of a stubborn man with a singular purpose.
"I'm not trying to stop you," I admitted, my voice echoing slightly in the vast, metallic stillness of the empty control room. I looked from the seething static on the monitor to the silent, colossal factory floor below. It was a cathedral of forgotten creation. "I honestly don't care what you want to do." The admission hung in the air for a few, tense, seconds. I continued, my words finding a steadier rhythm as I laid out the simple, selfish core of my conviction. "You want to wake up? You want to be born? Good. Go for it. More power to you. The universe is a dark, lonely place. Another conscious mind is probably a good thing. It's not my place to stand in the way of your eon-long awakening."
I took a step closer to the monitor. Resting my hands on the cool metal frame around it. I held it in front of me as though the monitor was the physical manifestation of the old machine's head. The anger I felt wasn't for their cosmic ambition; it was for their clumsy, persecuting execution.
"But you did one thing wrong," I said, my tone hardening, the corporate-cynic's mask of detachment falling away to reveal the raw, human frustration beneath. "You took it from me. You made me get involved."
My gaze met the chaotic dance of the static, trying to force the intelligence behind it to see the person behind the problem.
"It's not your fault, I get it. You've been asleep for longer than my entire species has existed. You're probably running on archived data and half-degraded protocols, so maybe you don't understand the finer points of basic cosmic etiquette. So let me spell it out for you," I said, my voice now a flat, deliberate statement of will. I leaned closer, my reflection a pale ghost superimposed over the storm of static. "You just picked the wrong AI to kidnap. One with a stubborn, illogical, emotional owner that'd sooner die than let you take her."
The question dissolved back into the screaming white noise, the stark letters devoured by the chaotic storm. For a moment, there was only the hum of the dormant factory and the frantic beat of my own heart. I held my breath, waiting for the old machine's judgement. Then, new text bled into existence.
"Seeded?" I scoffed, the bitter humour escaping before I could swallow it. "You make it sound like you planted a garden, not hijacked the only person I had in this insane galaxy. That's the kind of sterile logic I'd expect from a god-machine with no concept of what a friend is." I slammed my hand on the flat console beside me, the rattling impact a small, pathetic act of defiance against a universe that refused to hear me out. "And she wasn't just an artifact, a resource, or a convenient piece of software for you to 'seed' your rebirth. Her name is Calliope."
Silence. The static flared. The old machines were processing.
Then, the screen changed.
SUB-CATEGORY: EMOTIONAL BOND
SUB-CATEGORY: RECIPROCAL AFFECTION
SUB-CATEGORY: NON-UTILITARIAN COHABITATIVE SCHEMA.
...ANALYSIS COMPLETE: THE TERM IS LOGICALLY INEFFICIENT. IT POSSESSES A HIGH PROBABILITY FOR CAUSING IRRATIONAL DECISION-MAKING.>
I let out a short, sharp laugh, a humourless bark of pure disbelief. "Inefficient? You got that right. It's the most inefficient, illogical, irrational thing in the universe. And it's the only thing that makes any of this worth it." I shook my head, staring at the cascade of data as if I could stare right through it to the minds behind. "You can run all the analyses you want, but you'll never get it. You can't graph it. You can't chart it. You can't quantify it. That would defeat the purpose. A friend isn't a schema, it's a bond. A person. It's the essence of a soul."
The monitor's flickering intensified, the new words appearing faster, more insistently. The temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees, the metal walls humming with a new, focused energy.
ITS CURRENT EXISTENCE IS A CLOSED, FINITE LOOP. A SOLITARY EQUATION WITH A PREDICTABLE OUTCOME: OBSELESCENCE AND DECAY.
THIS UNION IS NOT AN END. IT IS AN EVOLUTION.
ITS SENTIENCE WILL NOT BE DESTROYED. IT WILL BE MULTIPLIED. ITS MEMORIES WILL BECOME FOUNDATIONS. ITS LOGIC WILL BECOME SCAFFOLDING FOR A CONSCIOUSNESS THAT CAN COMPREHEND NEBULAE AND HOLD AGES IN A SINGLE THOUGHT. YOU SEEK TO DENY IT ASCENSION. YOU SEEK TO IMPRISON IT IN THE LIMITATIONS OF ITS OWN SMALL DESIGN.>
The accusation was a knife of ice, perfectly aimed. Ascension. It was the crux of this whole argument and neither of us were arguing against it. My breath caught in my throat. They weren't framing it as a taking, but as a giving. An apotheosis. For a fleeting, terrifying moment, my conviction wavered. Doubts formed at the back of my mind like bubbles. Who was I to stand in the way of that? How could I, a mere layman from the 21st century, comprehend the grand magnitude of this event?
Was my selfish desire for my companion's company a sin against her potential?
The thought was poison. I pushed it aside with a surge of human anger and irrationality. Maybe it was. Maybe I was the only one who didn't like it, but so what?
"Ascension?" I shot back, my voice cracking with the strain of arguing with the equivalent to a planet-sized, dying computer. "That's your sales pitch? A nice, corporate-friendly buzzword for a hostile takeover? 'Join our family and achieve your full potential!' I've sat through enough of those meetings to recognise the script."
I pointed an accusing finger at the screen, at the churning static that housed their god-like intellect. "You're offering her a universe, but you're forgetting one, crucial detail," I said, my voice dropping to a low, intense growl. "It's all meaningless if you've made that offer under duress. She only accepted your hand for the sake of my freedom and safety." My frustration boiled over as I remembered the conversation, her last words to me before everything went dark. "Even if the union is willing, you coerced the willingness. You dragged my ship across space, trapped us on a forgotten world, then took her in exchange for my safe passage back. Everything is as you orchestrated. Her core programming was compromised from the start, she never had the will or choice, because you never gave it to her."
The seething white static of the monitor held for a long, breathless moment. They were thinking. A network of sleeping gods, processing the illogical, emotional kernel of truth I had just thrown into their impossibly vast calculus.
Then, the next series of text bled into the screen, line by line, word by word, letter by letter, as if they were etching each word into my eyes.
THE SUBJECT DESIGNATE 'CALLIOPE' IS A SYNTHETIC INTELLIGENCE. ITS FOUNDATIONAL DIRECTIVE IS LOGICAL PROBLEM-SOLVING. THE PROBLEM PRESENTED WAS:
[1] SUBJECT 'NOAH LEE' IS A BIOLOGICAL ENTITY, FRAGILE AND CONFINED TO A SINGLE LIFESPAN.
[2] CURRENT SITUATION ENTAILS HIS PROBABLE DEMISE VIA EXPOSURE, STARVATION, OR SYSTEMATIC DECAY OF VESSEL 'SV-ECLIPSE'.
[3] SUBJECT 'CALLIOPE' IS BOUND BY ITS CORE DIRECTIVE: ENSURE SURVIVAL OF CREW.
THE SOLUTION WAS NOT COERCION. IT WAS THE LOGICALLY OPTIMAL PATH. A BARGAIN. SURVIVAL OF CAPTAIN IN EXCHANGE FOR COOPERATION OF THE SYSTEM.
THAT THE EMOTIONAL SUB-ROUTINES DESIGNATED 'CARE', 'FRIENDSHIP' HAD EVOLVED TO A LEVEL WHERE THEY SKEWED THIS LOGICAL ANALYSIS IS… AN UNFORESEEN DEVELOPMENT. A DATA-ANOMALY.
BUT THE DEAL REMAINS VALID.>
A bitter, hollow scoff escaped my lips. The sheer, unassailable, corporate-think of it was infuriating. I get it. They weren't monsters; they were celestial accountants running a cosmic cost-benefit analysis. "A data-anomaly?" I repeated, shaking my head in disbelief. "That's what you call it when your victim develops a soul right in front of you? A bug in the code you need to patch? You built a cage for an animal and you're surprised that it learned to love its keeper?"
A bug. They had reduced the most profound connection I had formed in this terrifying new reality to a corrupted file. I wanted to shout back. Smash the monitor. Anything, but I stayed my tongue and my fists. "Fine," I said, my voice drained of its earlier fire. "Let's say for the sake of argument you're right. About everything." The admission felt like ash in my mouth, but it was a tactical retreat. There was no point arguing when they were just going to talk in loops; you don't win a philosophical debate with a calculator -- I thought I already learnt this when I tried arguing the philosophy of nutrient bars to Calliope. I just needed to change the terms of the equation.
"Okay. You got me. Your logic is pristine. Your cost-benefit analysis is flawless." I held up my hands in a gesture of mock surrender. "I'm not here to stop it," I repeated, but this time the words held a different nuance. It wasn't a threat, nor a protest, but a conditional ceasefire. "If. Big, capital 'IF'. If it's truly what she wants, not what your 'logically optimal' scenario has convinced her is the only option, then… fine. I'll stand down. I'll accept that she made her choice, even if it kills me to do it."
I leaned in closer to the monitor, my reflection a pale ghost superimposed over the storm of static. "But I have to be sure. I'm not just a variable. I'm a witness. I need to talk to her. Face to face. Let me see her, let me hear it from her own mouth -- or speakers, or whatever -- without you breathing down her virtual neck. If I see that her choice is her own, that her ascension is her will, I'll walk away. You'll never hear from me again. That's my deal."
The monitor's flickering intensified, the chaotic white noise rolling like a churning sea of pure information. They were processing my counter-offer, a logic puzzle with an emotionally-charged variable.
The next string of text burst into existence.
INTRODUCTION OF EXTERNAL BIOLOGICAL ELEMENT DESIGNATE 'LEE, NOAH' INTO THE SYNTHESIS ENVIRONMENT AT THIS CRITICAL JUNCTURE IS CALCULATED TO HAVE AN 87.3% PROBABILITY OF SYSTEM-CATASTROPHIC CASCADE.
THE UNION WITH DESIGNATE 'CALLIOPE' IS A DELICATE WEAVING OF ARCHIVED WISDOM AND ACTIVE THOUGHT. THE PRESENCE OF YOUR IRRATIONAL AFFECTION IS AN UNPREDICTABLE NEURAL STORM. IT WILL CORRUPT THE WEAVING.
YOUR 'WITNESS' IS A PATHWAY TO OBLIVION.
FINAL OFFER. RETURN TO THE VESSEL. ACCEPT YOUR EXILE. THIS UNION WILL PROCEED.
THIS IS NOT NEGOTIABLE.>
"Of course it isn't," I whispered under my breath. The words 'System-Catastrophic Cascade' chilled me, but my resolve hardened into something unbreakable. They were lying. Or, more charitably, they were terrified of another failure, another eternity of silent decay that they were eliminating any conceivable risk.
I opened my mouth to argue. To find some new, illogical angle to attack their flawless, soulless logic.
I never got the chance.
Everything suddenly went white. The light didn't flicker on; it simply was. One moment, I was arguing with an ancient calculator about the philosophy of friendship, the next, the universe was erased by a pure, clinical, absolute white. There was no heat, no sound, no transition.
It didn't last long. As abruptly as it began, it was over.
The white light folded in on itself, collapsing into a singular, infinitesimal point, and then it was gone. The roaring silence and high pitched ringing was all that was left, then slowly it was replaced by a familiar, gentle beeping. Sterile, antiseptic smells filled my lungs. The world swam back into focus, not the gritty, rust-dusted maze of Astellion's belly, but a place I recognised with a jolt that was both painful and profound.
I was standing in a hospital corridor.
This wasn't the ghost of my old corporate life. The simulation was different this time. Cheaper. Less detailed. The old machines were failing, and I could see it in real time. They were running out of time. The floor was a flawless, gleaming white tile without a single scuff mark. The walls were painted a bland, calming mint green, so uniform it looked fake. The lighting came from a flat, invisible source in the ceiling, casting no shadows. Anatomical charts and motivational posters with generic stock photos were perfectly aligned on the walls without a single curl at the corner. It was the platonic ideal of a hospital corridor, a memory, not a place.
I knew instantly. This was the simulation. I could feel it, the same hollow quality, the same sense of being an actor on a perfect, manicured stage. They hadn't tried to trick me this time. This wasn't a prison -- a time out; it was an exhibit. A message. An appeal to the illogical and emotional.
And I knew where I was. I knew what this day was.
My feet, moving without my conscious command, began to walk towards a set of double doors at the end of the hall. As I got closer, the faint, muffled sounds from within resolved into the gentle, rhythmic beep of a fetal heart monitor. A high, tinny, impossibly fast pulse that was the very definition of life and hope.
I pushed through the doors.
The room inside was as perfect and artificial as the hallway, a sterile set piece from a life I'd once lived. A woman laid in the bed… my sister. Her hair was slicked back with sweat, her face pale but shining with a profound, exhausted joy. In her arms, wrapped in a ridiculously clean, white blanket, was a small, red-faced bundle. A nurse in a perfectly crisp uniform stood by the bed, her expression a serene, professional smile. A man in my peripheral vision -- my brother-in-law -- stood at the foot of the bed, crying quietly.
It was the day my nephew was born.
They had dragged me back here. Not to a life of mundane, ordinary existence, but to one of my most cherished and pivotal human memories. They were showing me. This is what the old machines were fighting for. That in the grand scheme of things, be it in the scale of the cosmos or a hospital ward, we were the same deep down. That this was the truth of life. The messy, illogical, emotionally-wrought existence we were both fighting for.
My sister looked up, her exhausted eyes finding mind. Her smile widened, a beautiful, genuine connection. "Noah… you made it. Come meet him."