DESCENT
Mark H. Wandrey
David Parker dreamed. It wasn’t the normal dreaming a human experienced, with form and often memorable moments. It was the dream of a fractured consciousness. His mind skipped over parts of his life, concentrated on others, then lingered on powerful memories dredged up by his cerebral cortex. For the consciousness, which was David Parker, this seemed to go on for an infinity within the cold embrace of his extended slumber.
“Mr. Parker, after reviewing your application to the TRAPPIST Project, we sadly have to deny your participation. . . .”
David looked up from his tablet computer to see Joan Walker sitting two rows up from him in class. She was talking to a friend and never noticed him. She never did.
“And the first place in the national AI project goes to Dr. David Parker, Carnegie Mellon University!”
“You’re only doing it because that woman is a colonist,” his mother said. “She doesn’t know you exist!”
“She knows I exist,” David mumbled, the lie tasting sour in his mouth.
David brought a box of pizza into the dorm living room where everyone was watching the announcement. A few looked up in surprise. David never went there. The pizza was like a talisman to offer the strange tribe.
They’d all been waiting for it and planned to apply. Finally, they were going to begin taking applications for the colony ship to TRAPPIST. The ship would travel thirty-nine light-years and take centuries to get there, and he was going to go. Joan gave him a courteous smile when he sat the pizza down.
The TV spoke. “Here is how the application process will be conducted.”
“Computers, David?” his mother asked. “There are a billion computer programmers, why would you want to do that?”
“AIs, Mom; making a computer think for itself. It’s just . . . cool!”
David stared at the letter in abject disappointment. He’d seen on social media—only an hour ago—Joan had been accepted. He hadn’t.
All of David’s classmates had left an hour ago. He hadn’t moved from his seat. His teacher had gotten permission for him to stay late so David could watch an online discussion on AI. He started high school next year and had just discovered the subject of advanced AI programming.
On the webcast a scientist from Carnegie Mellon University began discussing their advanced computational science recruiting program. David stared in rapt attention; his teacher smiled.
“Starship Victoria construction is being plagued by delays as the massive colony ship is under construction in low Earth orbit. With a trip planned for the TRAPPIST star system, which will last for centuries, the project spokesman states that delays are to be expected. However, no explanation has been given as to why it appears a second ship is also under construction.”
David put the sandwich down and looked at the TV in confusion. A second ship?
“You said I was a good match for the program!” David said. He tried as hard as he could to not sound disappointed over the webcall.
“You were, technically. But David, your interpersonal skills are the problem. Try to imagine being one of the colonists, alone on an alien world.”
“I know, I want that.”
“But they don’t want you.”
David smashed the laptop lid down so hard the screen cracked.
He’d never tested in even the top twenty-five percent of his junior high classes. When the teacher posted the results from their first lab in computer learning, David was number one. His classmates, most of whom had never said a word to him because he never spoke to them, stared at the name in amazement. He was amazed as well. Something clicked.
“You said they don’t want me,” David said. He was using his cellphone on purpose. When he saw the call was from the TRAPPIST Project web address, he didn’t want to break another computer.
“The colonists don’t, David. However, the powers that be have decided to make a change in the way we’re approaching the entire project. We think there’s a place for you after all—in the terraforming mission. Something that both speaks to your abilities, and doesn’t play off any of your . . . shall we say, social weaknesses?”
“I’m listening.”
Suddenly something changed, and the dreams were torn away to be replaced with icy, numb pain.
Day 1
David couldn’t sit up. He could hardly move at all. His breath came out in a plume inside the cryochamber. The air was circulated cold to allow him to focus as he floated in the warm gel-like revival fluid. “How long?” he croaked. Of course, no one was there to answer.
He blinked and tried to concentrate. His eyes didn’t want to focus. It wasn’t like the training runs; this was brutal, cold reality. The revival fluid felt like liquid fire, his insides felt like ice and he couldn’t feel his extremities.
Did I speak? He tried again. “How long?”
He heard his voice echo this time, and still there was no response.
Damnit. He concentrated and tried to focus. There was a status display on the left side of his cryochamber. Simple information only, like his bio signs. He’d thought it was kind of stupid to have this information. He was a technician, not a doctor. However, one of the data elements was the mission clock.
He could see lines of fuzzy bright lights. His head was above the fluid, of course. Its specific gravity was lower than saltwater. He was so buoyant in the goo that he was less than half submerged.
Must be in my eyes. He blinked hard several times and looked again. Yes, better now. He could see numbers and moving lines showing both EEG and EKG data. A single static numerical value was in the upper left of the little display. It said 644.88.
“Impossible,” his voice croaked. He blinked and looked again. The number didn’t change. He’d been in cryostasis for less than two years.
David spent some time concentrating on his reluctant body. The training had explained that he would be disoriented. He was. He would feel frail and cold. Oh, without a doubt. He could recover quicker by forcing his body into motion. His body didn’t want to be forced into motion. As he slowly flexed first his shoulders, then elbows, then fingers, his mind thawed and he realized why he was awakened after such a short time in cryo.
“Malfunction,” he mumbled.
For his own safety, the cryochamber wouldn’t open until he could enter a simple code. Next to the display were four buttons with 1, 2, 3, 4 printed on them. He would have to press a preset code he’d saved when entering cryostasis 644.88 days ago in Earth orbit. It couldn’t be 1234, or 4321.
It took quite a bit of time to remember what he’d chosen. 4132. The time it took to remember the code helped him make sense of why you needed to enter the code. Having someone wandering around the ship half zoned out was a suboptimal solution.
If remembering the code took a lot of time, actually punching it in with his half-numb and unresponsive fingers took much longer. The keypad was analog because of all the fluid in the cryo chamber, so he had to push with enough force to register the input. He didn’t know how much time passed before he managed it. He might have slept.
A loud beep signaled success and the heavy plexi lid unseated. Air pressure equalized with a hiss and David felt his ears pop. For a brief second his half-frozen brain was afraid the ship was in vacuum and he was about to die from decompression. However, the hissing stopped, and the lid rolled back.
He took a long time to sit up, but when he finally managed it, he felt better. The warmth of the fluid was finally making his limbs more responsive. He had to urinate, and he remembered from the training back on Earth that this was a good sign. However, he didn’t want to pee in the fluid—that meant he needed to get out of the chamber.
As he was slowly throwing a leg over the side and reaching for the floor, David realized he was in gravity. The ring had spun up, and there was air!
The atmosphere tasted fine and he didn’t smell smoke or ozone. No alarms were sounding. So whatever had happened, it wasn’t catastrophic. He cleared his throat, finally able to concentrate enough to form questions.
“Computer—report.” Silence. He coughed and spoke louder. “Prometheus, computer—report!” Still nothing. “Well, shit.”
His foot touched the floor. It was cold, though not ice cold. The metallic grate which made up the deck was solid and somehow reassuring. Lighting was standard: subdued, low-intensity LED . . . as was used throughout the habitable portions of Prometheus.
He stood by the chamber; a slight chill across his body made his privates contract. He looked down at his naked, dripping body and exhaled. Everything was working, and that was something, right?
A towel lay in the cubby next to his chamber. He grabbed it and began methodically drying his body. Once the slippery fluid was sopped up he felt warmer, though no less exposed.
“What am I worried about? It’s not like anyone else within a billion miles cares about seeing me naked.” He was the only person on the ship, after all.
David draped the towel over the end of his cryostasis chamber. He noted the fluid was almost drained away and it appeared to be cleaning itself. More signs that everything was working correctly. What the hell did the computer wake me up for? “Computer, respond!”
After waiting for a full minute, he cursed under his breath and began shuffling toward the little bathroom. The need to reach it was becoming rather . . . urgent. He barely made it in time.
He emerged from the toilet after finishing and laughed. “Damn good thing I’m alone on this tub.” He coughed and closed the door, letting the chamber’s systems go to work.
His locker was next to the toilet. Inside were three pairs of coveralls and underwear. He didn’t think he’d be awake for long, so he just pulled on the first pair of coveralls he could reach and stuffed his feet into slippers. A little dinette was next to the locker, as was the modular kitchen. The remainder of the cryostasis chamber was hundreds of hatches holding spare parts and supplies for his arrival in TRAPPIST.
David walked past the now dark cryostasis chamber to one of the other doors. Opening it, he entered Prometheus’ command deck. He’d spent a few hours in the space as the crew put the ship into cruise mode. Once the ship was under power and the Cartwright drive began pushing her away from Earth, the medical lead put David into cryostasis while everyone else boarded a shuttle back to Earth. Prometheus accelerated slowly, so it was easy for them to return to Earth.
Less than ten percent of his training involved operating the ship. The computer had the files he’d need if anything required attention, which it wouldn’t. Now it was time to get to the bottom of why the AI wasn’t talking to him.
He took a seat in the computer station chair, yawned and typed an access code into the blank station. He tried to imagine what it would be like waking up on Victoria with hundreds of colonists all buzzing about, every minute of every day accounted for. Less than two years. He realized Victoria hadn’t even cleared the Oort Cloud yet. Wouldn’t for another twenty-eight years.
Joan Walker.
David pulled his thoughts violently away from that thought and stared at the screen. It was blank. He blinked and tapped at the keyboard. Nothing happened. For the first time he really looked around the command deck with its six workstations. They were all dark.
He sat for a few minutes, thinking. He couldn’t make up his mind. Was it his half-frozen brain, or was he still in cryostasis immersed in a long dream? Flashing lights on the commander’s workstation and an insistent beeping tone cleared it up—this was no dream.
The monitor should have come alive as soon as he touched it. He clearly remembered the stylized icon representing the AI that could process faster than any human could. There should be a rotating cube, with lines racing around its surface. It wasn’t any true indication of what was going on, but rather a sign that all was well. Only the cube was empty and just sitting there. All wasn’t well.
David took one more look at the blank monitor in front of him and ground his teeth. It appeared the main computer was down. Of all the possible situations he could deal with, a computer failure was not one of them.
Sure, there was a fail-safe in place. Should all computer control of primary systems go off-line, the human operator would be revived. However, this was a malfunction between various ship’s components and the computer.
The ship’s brain, an advanced AI he had helped program, was made of a dozen independent computers linked via a positronic network. It was widely considered as close to human-level redundancy as possible. It had a thousand independent programs interwoven through its learning matrix along with exabytes of quantum memory.
Furthermore, the computer’s physical processors and storage were dispersed throughout the habitat ring and the main structure. Half the ship could be destroyed, and because of the system’s redundancy, the computers would still function.
He reached under the console and tapped a switch. A section of the panel flipped over to reveal a simple LCD screen. David touched the screen and it came to life. This was the mechanical reporting system which displayed status on all twelve main processors. On it was twelve red icons. The main computers were all shut down.
“Well, shit.”
* * *
Despite being—essentially—a computer tech, David had spent most of his time learning how to repair mechanical failures. After two weeks in zero-G training, he was nominally qualified for EVA operations that fixed a hull breach or damage to the drive. In reality, David was nothing more than a backup to the squad of maintenance robots.
Training for troubleshooting the computers lasted three days and was the lengthiest of the never do this items on his list. “Resetting the computers is a worst-case scenario. It isn’t something you will be expected to do.”
“Then why bother showing me?” he’d asked.
The various computer engineers stared at one another before one finally answered. “Because it’s theoretically possible a failure could occur.”
David stared at the twelve red icons.
“Theory proved,” he said to the empty room.
Prometheus had a thousand computers. Maybe more.
The AI, in turn, told the other computers what to do, and when to do it. Absent that input, most of the other computers would continue their tasks until they needed instructions. Some would go on forever. Others, like his cryostasis, would note the lack of communication and wake him up.
So here he was, on a ship without guidance, and twelve dead computers. He touched the master control, and the icon for processor number 1. “CONFIRM?” flashed on the bottom of the display.
He stroked the confirmation with a thumb. The Number 1 processor was the system’s cerebral cortex. It was essential for everything to work optimally. The AI could function without it. However, Prometheus’ main function as an advanced terraforming mission would be badly compromised without it.
David held his breath and waited as the processor’s icon went from red to flashing yellow. “Rebooting” was displayed under the flashing yellow. He’d never done this, even in training.
“Come on,” he said. The reboot seemed to take a long time. Too long? He was about to hit the reboot again when the icon stopped flashing and turned green.
“YES!” he cried and began rebooting the other eleven processors.
The computer engineers had told him that once the processors rebooted, the AI would come online when enough power was available.
The processors came online one after another, quicker than the first had rebooted, building his confidence. Just some kind of a freak failure. I’ll be back in the freezer once the AI analyzes what went wrong. The robots could handle any repairs.
The AI interface on his console was a holographic readout showing the busy processes of the AI, with a three-dimensional dancing flame that showed he was talking to Prometheus. When he had first come aboard, he’d almost expected the AI icon to be a big red eye (he’d always loved that old movie).
David waited for the flame to appear. The status showed zero percent available resources. The flame didn’t appear, and the percentage didn’t change. He looked back at the processor display. All twelve were operating, but the AI wasn’t there.
Having done it once, rebooting the processors he wasn’t supposed to reboot wasn’t as intimidating the second time. He booted one through twelve, just as he had done before. “Come on . . .” he urged, as he waited. After a few minutes, the processors were again up and running, but the AI was not.
David moved to the engineering station and opened the fold-out LCD screen there. Instead of master computer controls, this screen had status of Prometheus’ drive. A series of green icons greeted him. The engines were running. “Oh, thank God.”
One after another, he visited the stations: life support, navigation, robotics, ship’s internal systems, and comms. The only ones working were life support and internal systems. The most autonomous of the ship’s systems, he considered.
None of the contingencies he had trained on matched what he was facing. And, without the AI, he couldn’t pursue other options. The ship would pursue its course, burning the massive fuel reserves, slowly building up speed until it ran the tanks dry. He’d reach TRAPPIST alright, and shoot right through the system and fly on forever.
* * *
David went back to the living section and stood staring at his cryostasis chamber. He could climb in and just go back to sleep. How long would it function beyond the intended 200 or so years? Five hundred? A thousand? Eventually Prometheus’ fusion powerplant would go cold and he’d sleep on and on and on.
A voice whispered in the back of his mind. And what about Joan? She would be coming on Victoria, behind Prometheus. Without the terraforming Prometheus was to perform, it was possible the thousands on Victoria wouldn’t survive.
He went to the toilet again and splashed some water on his face. He was feeling steadily better, if not optimistic, about his situation. In the living area he busied himself bringing the various systems to life. There was a small entertainment console, as well as a dedicated computer system he could use for any repair work.
The cooking arrangements were closer to what you might find on an old RV on Earth. A combination rehydration/heating unit would prepare stored meals and a small heating plate could make coffee or boil water. No fresh or frozen food was aboard—nothing would last for the centuries he was supposed to be sleeping.
He opened the first stores hatch. Inside were 120 meals—forty breakfasts, forty lunches, and forty dinners. The walls of his living section were lined with forty-five such storage compartments. A grand total of 5,400 meals which would last him 1,800 days. Enough to allow him to spend the roughly five years he would need to supervise Prometheus while the colony terraforming equipment landed and went to work. Then he’d sleep again, waiting for Victoria to arrive with the colonists.
He took a lunch from the compartment and set it into the cooker, programmed the machine, and waited while it worked. In five minutes, it beeped, and he had a hot meal. While he ate, he considered his situation. The processors were working fine, he could tell that much. However, they weren’t initiating the AI, which meant the problem was likely in their distinct memory modules.
When he’d finished eating, he knew what to do. At the rear of the living compartment was an access hatch. Through it he could reach the other sections of the habitation ring. The remainder of the ring contained life support, as well as five of the twelve processors and memory modules. The other six were in the central hull. Their distinct memory modules were likewise distributed throughout, with six in the habitation ring and the remaining seven in the central hull.
He grabbed his tool belt from the locker and clipped it on. Without the AI or robots to assist, Dave reviewed his memory of the ship’s detailed schematic. Nearly every day during training he had studied the schematic.
Refreshed from his meal and fully awake, his brain was now firing on all cylinders. He crawled through the access shaft directly to the computer memory module. The crawlway to the memory module was colder than his habitation area, but he wouldn’t be there long.
At the module he removed the access panel. There was warning tape on all four fasteners: Caution—Computer Memory—Do Not Open. Of course, he opened it anyway. The memory modules were behind multiple levels of radiation shielding, deep within carbon fiber–reinforced and cooled frameworks. What he had was the installation access, more of a legacy from when the ship was built and AI installed.
Dave removed his personal diagnostic computer from the tool belt, pulled a data connector out and snapped it into the memory module’s port. After verifying it was properly connected, he touched the Diagnostic button.
“Working,” the tool told him. A moment later it reported. “Module Functional.”
“Well, that’s good,” he said. Maybe this was the only functional one? He was about to disconnect when a thought came to him. He pulled up the diagnostic tool’s menu and scrolled down to select another operation.
“Memory Unallocated.”
He blinked at the response. It didn’t make sense. He ran it again and got the same result. According to his diagnostic tool, the massive memory module which should have been brimming with the data making up a sophisticated AI was empty—it was like an unformatted disk.
Three hours of crawling confirmed all six of the memory modules in the habitation ring were wiped clean, like the day they’d been delivered to the team writing the AI. David had seen one memory module when he had worked on the project—a boring, insulated box with a dozen fiberoptic cable bundles and a pair of power leads. It could have been any of a dozen other components on Prometheus. However, unlike those other components, these added together to make an AI.
Lose one module, fine. Lose two, or even three, and the AI could still function at some level. Even with four down, the ship’s mission could continue, though with difficulty. But that was the threshold. Without at least eight of the twelve memory modules, the AI could not form. All six in the habitation module were blank, and Dave had no reason to believe the other six in the central hull weren’t as well.
He sat on the command deck, staring blankly at the opposite wall. Gone. Every byte of data gone as if it were never there. His diagnostic results resembled the tests that had been done on the modules when they arrived for programming. Empty. There hadn’t been any training on what could cause such a thing, because it was impossible.
“Somebody blanked them on purpose,” he said aloud. “I don’t see any other way.” He chewed another bite. “What difference does it really make?” The answer was, of course, none.
Day 5
Dave finished connecting his EVA suit to its holders, verifying the O2 feeds and power couplings were properly connected. It would be recharged and ready to go when he needed it again. He was tired, hot, and hungry.
Exiting from the airlock into the habitation area, he sighed. It was only a few hundred cubic meters, but at least it wasn’t space. He didn’t like space. It didn’t care about him, either.
He moved to the tiny dining table, covered with tablet computers and printouts. It had taken him three days to detail his plan, and the last two days to complete it. He’d just finished the final EVA. Or so he hoped.
David grabbed a cup of coffee and warmed it, then went into the command deck. Nothing had changed, except his computer station, which was now as messy as the dining table. He sat in the chair and activated one of the auxiliary computer controls. It was supposed to simply be a system to diagnose control pathways and a few other functions. He’d been rerouting data lines all over the ship in the hopes he could do much more with it.
“Time to find out if I’m right,” he said, and tapped in the override sequence. The screen flashed and a Rebooting icon came on. He cast an eye at the LCD displaying the twelve main processors status. If he’d done it wrong, it could make the situation worse.
“Connection Established.”
“Yes!” David cried and fist pumped. Now he had access to both the AI’s blanked memory, and the colony databanks. He took a calming breath and typed in commands. The colony data was saved on memory modules in the ship’s main hull as well as each of the landers—everything from how to fix a broken leg to adapting seed stock to an overly acidic atmosphere. More importantly, the ship’s own maintenance procedures were duplicated there. All he had was emergency repair files, and few of those. The AI was supposed to have all the rest.
The screen began to display vast directories of data organized by type. David heaved another sigh. Whatever murdered the AI hadn’t affected the colony databanks. He sipped coffee and perused the files, flagging ones he might need. He didn’t have a plan yet, other than responding to the immediate concerns. He needed work-arounds for the various ship’s systems which would have been managed by the AI.
The engineering station began flashing a red light he hadn’t seen before. David got up and went to look. It was a status warning from the drive. Power levels were fluctuating. A problem the AI would have dealt with in a second, or if not, sent robots to examine. With the drive under power, he couldn’t get close to it without risking a lethal radiation dose.
He looked at the robotics station and frowned. There was nothing wrong with Prometheus’ complement of robots, except that they were operated by the AI. There had been no need for individual autonomous programming. Seemed a tad shortsighted now.
David went back to his newly established computer and accessed the drive operational manuals. Referencing the sort of error he was seeing, he tried to estimate how long he had. The drive would shut down if power levels got outside of a certain range. He examined the fluctuations and did some mental math. Maybe three days, was his best guess. What happened if the drive shut down? He found the answer to the question quickly. It couldn’t be restarted. It was meant to run until they arrived at TRAPPIST, at which point its useful life would be over.
Having only accelerated for 650 days, Prometheus was at four percent of the speed of light, a fraction of her 0.2C cruising speed. Assuming she was still on course, which he couldn’t be sure of because the AI had handled navigation, he’d still arrive at TRAPPIST—in a thousand years.
“One problem at a time,” he said and went to work.
Day 8
One robot finished adjusting the cryogenic coolant flow manually while another was still replacing the failed module. Immediately the drive’s power levels returned to normal. Dave smiled and yawned. He had gotten maybe six hours’ sleep over the last three days.
The programming he’d participated in for the AI on Earth was as one member of a thousand-person team. No one person had the whole of it. The AI was a hundred thousand discreet logic trees put together into a neural network which, if done properly, merged into an AI.
To get the robots working he needed to write a subroutine, like the little part of a brain which caused your eyes to blink at certain times. Well, finally, after three days, he could blink.
Dave double-checked that the command buffer for his new minions was working properly, then went back to the habitation area. He thought about food but elected to collapse on his bunk instead. Sleep took him in seconds.
He woke later to the same lighting, and of course the same space. He checked his watch and saw he’d slept six hours. Two of his robotic minions were at the exit to his habitation area. They reminded him of crabs, a central body surrounded by six legs and a pair of manipulators which could reach and handle things from any angle. Each leg had its own set of eyes, giving the robot incredible visibility. A pair of cold-gas thrusters finished off the design, allowing it to function in zero gravity.
It was a good thing they could operate in zero gravity, because most of the ship was nearly weightless. The drive continued to push Prometheus ever faster, but with a tiny amount of inertial gravity.
Dave got a shower and started a meal. The programming job he’d done on the robots was working better than he thought. The subroutine wasn’t difficult to write, and the robotic management software was already in the colony database. It just took time to get the control software to work on his orders, instead of the designed omnipresent AI.
When he exited the shower the two robots were still there, of course. He could see their eyes tracking him as he came out, toweling his hair dry. “What are you looking at?” he asked, then laughed. The two robots waited with the patience of a mechanical being.
“If I got them running,” he thought aloud, “maybe I can do the rest.” He stared at the piles of code notes and the dozens of computer tablets. He’d spent sixty or more hours to write one subroutine. What he was considering was so much more immense. How much time would it take?
“What more do I have, than time?” he said, glancing at the robots. Management had picked him for this job because of his ability to work alone. Well . . . that and he didn’t really like people. Don’t need them, either. So why not?
One subsystem at a time. Begin with the base level coding of the AI. All the logic routines were in the colony database. He just needed to put them all together. All hundred billion or so of them, in the right order, and interconnections.
“Fine, I’ll start tomorrow.” He looked at the huge stores of food. “Why not, what more do I need than time?”
Day 30
Dave savored the cake, even if it was a rehydrated forgery. It tasted pretty good. The computer array was running another compile of the AI operating subsystem. Tablet computers were in neat piles on his workstation and a dozen stacks of printed code samples were organized around the room. Some were piled on his bed, others on the table next to him, and still more on the dormant cryostasis chamber.
He had gotten tired of staying on the command deck, so he’d run a command pathway into his living quarters. Less running back and forth.
In the intervening twenty-two days he’d managed to get the robotics subroutine to be more autonomous, linked directly to any trouble signals in engineering. The robotic control program was smart enough for anything necessary, only needing the AI to tell it when. He’d just set them on automatic. Easy. With a small army of thirty-five bots, there was nothing they couldn’t handle.
He had just finished the life support programming the day before, only to wake up in the morning to find it throwing hundreds of error codes. He quickly finished his treat (planned the night before when he thought his job was done) and dove into the problem.
“Figures,” he mumbled as he watched the code compile complete. “I was going to go to work on comms today.” The computer told him the compile results were available and he examined them on screen. Dozens and dozens of contingency errors were listed. He scrolled down them in confusion. He could have sworn he accounted for every contingency. With a shrug, he began reworking the subroutine to add the contingency codes he’d missed.
“I’ll just have another piece of cake when I’m done.”
Day 92
“Comms System Down.”
“Son of a bitch,” Dave snarled and dropped the tablet on his table. It dislodged a pile of programming printouts which slid toward the floor in a cascade of paperwork. It didn’t really hit the floor but landed on a stack of discarded food packets. “I need to clean up a little,” he mumbled.
He’d moved onto the comms system almost two months ago. Progress was slow, however, because life support kept throwing contingency codes. Each time it was one he’d never planned for, and it took him a couple hours to troubleshoot the problem and program it before going back to the comms.
There had been no serious malfunctions, so his robotic minions busied themselves with routine housekeeping. They were always coming and going, giving him a little amusement as they went about their duties.
Dave picked up the tablet from its resting place and examined the failure report. He had a movie playing in the background on a wall-mounted display. It was an old Earth movie called It’s a Wonderful Life. The ship’s chronometer said it was the twenty-fifth of December. “Merry Christmas,” he mumbled as he stared at the report.
He didn’t understand why comms was taking so much more time than life support had. Sure, life support wasn’t really done because of the contingency errors. Comms should have been simpler, considering the main function was to fire a laser toward Earth and maintain a two-way communication.
He’d found out shortly after starting on comms that it was still functioning. He’d thought it would be finicky and have gone down shortly after the AI was destroyed (he still wanted to know how that had happened). The diagnostics reported that the comms laser was in two-way communications with Earth. But Dave couldn’t see what was coming in or going out.
“That’s not acceptable,” he’d said, and set about recreating the AI subroutines designed to manage the comms laser. It looked easy. Weeks had gone by without success.
“It’s not accepting the input,” he realized. One of the crablike robots was parked nearby watching him. Dave looked at the machine. “Maybe I should program you guys to clean up this place?” Another robot entered and took advantage of the habitation area power port to recharge.
“I don’t want to screw with the robotics subroutine. That one is actually working.” He put aside the comms project and accessed the robotics subroutine. He looked over at the two bots sitting in his space. “You’ll be Huey, and you, Dewey.” Of course, the robots had nothing to say.
Dave altered the robotics subroutine, removing the two bots from the service group. He would program them later to be his personal cleaning servants. He grinned and considered what else he might do with the two bots. Even though he had hundreds of thousands of videos to watch, he was a little bored. A side amusement would be welcome.
Day 221
Dave kind of missed his messy living space. It had character. Huey and Dewey were so efficient he couldn’t drop a crumb before one of them was scuttling over to catch and dispose of it. He was five months into his navigation subroutine project, and it was beginning to feel like something he’d never finish.
While the databases had all the information the subroutine needed, it didn’t have those little connecting points of logic you would use to guide a ship. Dave didn’t know how he could handle all of them. A few weeks into rewriting the navigation subroutine he came a screeching stop as he had to dig into the colony database to learn how interstellar navigation worked.
If he wasn’t in a starship racing into the void of interstellar space, he might have found it funny. He didn’t have a clue how Prometheus was going to find TRAPPIST beyond having been aimed at it when leaving Earth.
After months of studying navigation, he knew he was no expert, but he had enough knowledge to write the necessary exceptions to make the program work. He woke up that morning to no exceptions in any of his programs. When he finished breakfast, he treated himself with a game of cards against Huey and Dewey.
As the programming job became more onerous, he had distracted himself by teaching the two bots various card games. It was indeed a wonderful distraction and took up many hours of many days.
Playing a game of Texas Hold’em, Dave watched the two bots and wondered if they were cheating him. “Don’t play me,” he said. Eyes turned from the cards to look at him. Programs he’d written considered his words, decided there were no actual commands, and the bots returned to the game. He snorted and wished they’d learn to banter.
“Learn?” he said. Exceptions. You learned through exceptions. “I’m an idiot.”
Dave dropped his cards and stared at the piles of tablets. Months and months spent writing responses to myriads of exceptions. He’d been going crazy keeping up with those exceptions, all the while amazed that the program teams on Earth had thought up all those exceptions he now had to write, just now realizing that they’d never experienced any such thing.
“AIs are learning computers.” He’d learned that simple truth in high school over a decade ago. Of course they hadn’t programmed all the exceptions, the AI learned them itself in endless hours of simulations. It probably destroyed Prometheus a thousand times, a million times, each time learning not to make the same mistake again.
Dave laughed and laughed, tears rolling down his cheeks. Months working to fill in little holes whenever he found them, when the AI originally filled in the holes with a firehose of simulations. It had probably learned more in an hour than Dave had been able to program in his months of laboring.
What choice did he have but to continue? Recreate the entire AI? He’d never really thought he could do it. Only, was there actually any choice? He’d never gotten comms working, and even if he did, he couldn’t do anything more than scream in frustration back at Earth, now billions of miles behind him.
He decided he would seriously set to work on bringing the AI back to life. If he could succeed at recreating the complex set of control programs, it would mean he could be done faster and back to sleep. Huey made a bet, and the game continued.
Day 488
Dave woke up to a sound he hadn’t heard in a long time—an alarm. He got up from his little bed and tripped over a pile of tablets, cursing because it was the level-two logic project. The ship stores had 500 handheld tablets. Three hundred of them decorated his living space, so many that he’d had to disable Huey and Dewey’s cleaning functions. He managed to slap the lights on as he moved onto the command deck.
On the engineering panel alarms were blaring. He dropped into the seat and examined the alarms. One of Prometheus’ fuel tanks was bleeding out.
“How the hell?” he wondered. His navigations education suggested an answer. Micrometeorite. Prometheus was going almost 17,000,000 meters per second, or six percent of the speed of light. At such speeds a grain of sand had the energy of a small bomb.
Dave growled and silenced the alarms on the engineering panel. The propellant tank was nearly empty. He’d just wondered why the bots hadn’t sealed the leak when he realized an alarm was still sounding. This one was from the robotics controls.
He moved over and examined the controls. He blinked in disbelief. The alarm was informing him of the loss of twenty-nine of his thirty-five robots. Disbelief turned to horror. What the hell happened?
He immediately stopped all robot operations on the ship, and promptly lost the thirtieth robot a second later. “Damn it!” he screamed. As quickly as he could remember the commands, he called up the logs from the dead bots.
When the tank was breached, the robotic maintenance system dispatched a pair of bots to fix the breach. He’d written such a response, though it hadn’t been written to deal with an ultra-high-pressure tank spewing propellant at near zero Kelvin. The bots were torn apart. So two more were sent, and they met the same fate. This continued until the propellant tank was empty. His last-minute casualty was because he’d stopped the robot just as one was flying along the hull. It was now kilometers astern and would never come back.
“Why didn’t I think to add an alert if a robot was taken off-line?” he wondered aloud. It seemed so blatantly obvious now.
Five robots left for the rest of the trip. Was it enough? He didn’t know. Huey and Dewey were sitting in his habitation area, waiting for his amusement. He chewed his lower lip. Three robots to maintain Prometheus, then. He got back to work on the AI and made additions to the robotics response protocols.
Day 1,008
Dave had wanted to celebrate the AI’s rebirth before he reached his thousand-day mark of waking. No such luck. He was eight days past it, sitting at his workstation in his underwear, coding, when he realized he’d missed his goal.
He stopped working and applauded; the clapping sounds echoed dully off the walls of the command deck. He laughed for a moment, then went back to work.
Day 1,097
Dave watched the AI monitor working its magic. Well, black magic. The stylized cube icon would never come back, so he’d programmed a simpler one. It was a Rubik’s Cube. Unlike the original, this one was a representation of the budding AI’s processing level.
A completely static unmoving cube meant nothing was happening. Rotating in space meant its base level code was processing. If the various colored squares were rotating, as if someone was trying to solve the puzzle, it was learning. The faster it spun or rotated, the harder it was working.
The cube had been spinning slowly for two hours as it finished compiling itself. It would never assemble magically into a full AI, like the old one had. What he was making couldn’t really be considered an AI. However, if he succeeded, it would be enough. He hoped.
“Compile Complete.” The cube was spinning at a slow, steady rate. He’d gotten a stable compile; the program was working.
He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. Two days ago he passed the three-year mark. Three years since he’d woken up and found himself with a ship running blindly on autopilot. This had to work. It had to.
“Prometheus,” he said.
“Ready,” it responded.
Dave cringed. The voice was horrible, more like the old MIDI voders used a century ago. The voice systems were files in the colony database, so he used them. But damn, without the full AI making it a nuanced voice indistinguishable from a real person . . . ugh.
“Engage engineering subroutine,” he ordered.
“Working.” The cube began to rotate faster.
“Integrate exception file Engineering One.”
“Working.” The cube started rotating colors. It was learning.
“YES!” he cried, then calmed himself. He wasn’t there yet.
Hours spent writing out lists of potential problems and their solutions, instead of programming one-on-one code for dealing with problems, was yielding a result 1,000 times more efficient. The AI’s twelve powerful processors chewed through his list and their possible solutions, creating more permutations than his mind could conceive of—and it did it on an order of magnitude faster than his brain was capable. The cube’s colors rotated about as fast as a real-world Rubik’s Cube would have if he were trying to solve a problem.
“Integration successful,” the AI said, and the cube stopped rotating colors and just spun slowly.
Dave controlled his excitement. He’d had several failures after reaching this point in other tests. Several hundred times, actually. He accessed the budding AI’s logic functions and watched it work in deeper detail. Unlike all the previous attempts, this time he saw no conflicts. He smiled and relaxed a bit. Maybe a special dessert tonight?
Day 1,399
Dave left the command deck while the AI ran another huge simulation that he’d spent twenty days writing. Systematic faults across engineering and navigation were testing the AI’s ability to cross-connect problem solving between multiple systems. For the first time, he was becoming confident he could go back to sleep at long last.
“Almost four years,” he said to Dewey, who was playing solitaire while Huey watched. The robot’s eyes looked at him then two legs performed a passable shrug. Both bots now had an extra memory module to handle the hundreds of hours of programming he’d added.
“What do you want me to do about it?” Dewey asked.
“He’s going nuts,” Huey said.
“I’m not going nuts,” Dave retorted. Huey made a raspberry sound.
He walked over to the long dormant cryostasis chamber. Thirteen hundred and ninety-nine days of his eighteen hundred days in stores were gone. Four hundred days was going to be tight when he got to TRAPPIST. He’d long ago double-checked that the programming for terraforming was intact. The only thing he would need to do was be more hands-on during the actual deployment of assets. The landers were automated, thank God.
“Sleep until six months before arrival,” he said as he opened the cryostasis chambers control panel. “Use the sensors to verify target, make orbit, deploy assets, then sleep again.”
He’d program the ship’s automated beacon to let Victoria know what was wrong. He’d never done an EVA to Prometheus’ transmitter. He was sure the problem was there, because no matter what he did comms couldn’t be restored. The beacon was short range, but it would be enough.
What will Joan say when she finds out what I did?
He initialized the stasis chamber and waited. Nothing happened. He made a face and hit the self-test button.
“No Programmed Response.”
“What?” he said aloud.
“You talking to me, boss?” Huey asked.
“Shut up,” he said and tapped at the controls.
“No Programmed Response.”
In a panic, he began searching his cluttered workspace for tools, cursing the decision to have Huey and Dewey stop cleaning. Cursing, he turned to the bots. “Open maintenance covers on the cryostasis chamber.”
“Right away, boss,” they said at the same time.
While they worked, he found his diagnostic tools. By the time he had them, the bots had the chamber open. He knelt by the computer systems within the chamber and attached his tool. It only took two button pushes to get the response he knew he would get. “Memory Empty.”
“It blanked the cryostasis, too,” he said, shaking his head. “No.”
An hour later he’d dug into the internal workings of the cryostasis chamber. Hardwired bios maintained the person in stasis and woke them up. The unit required input to place a person in stasis—input provided by the AI. The parameters were . . . daunting. A thousand datapoints on the occupant feed from dozens of sensors all worked to carefully cool the occupant to the very edge of death. Once there, keeping the person in stasis was the easy part.
Dave looked around him, at all the empty compartments in the habitation area, and began to sob.
Day 1,505
The alarm woke Dave and he carefully climbed from his bed. He removed the dark mask over his eyes and blinked painfully at the intense light. The pathway between his bunk and the bathroom was narrow and he moved carefully. A sea of buckets covered every square centimeter of floor.
By the time he was done in the bathroom his eyes were adjusted to the constant light and he could survey the crops. Every bucket had a plastic rod stuck into the soil, and every rod had a series of vines climbing them. Some vines were green, most were brown.
He had a lot more expertise at EVA trips now. Twenty separate trips to Prometheus’ four landers had yielded the seeds and soil, all sealed for the terraforming project. He was careful to only take a little from each lander. The water and buckets were from the habitation ring. Each bucket had a drip line and the life support was constantly struggling with high humidity levels.
Dave sat and picked up a tablet holding tutorials on growing beans. More colony data. Despite extensive training for the mission, none of the instructions included growing beans in space. He really wished he’d taken an agriculture class in high school.
He’d been dreaming that the beans were trying to kill him in his sleep. It wasn’t far from the truth. “I don’t suppose you two can help?”
“No, boss,” Huey and Dewey answered at the same time. The room was hot and humid, and full of dying bean plants. He had to admit to himself, it wasn’t working.
Dave had his breakfast and looked over the programming notes. The cryostasis system didn’t allow for shortcuts. The details on how you placed a human into cold sleep were all in the colony files. It was a difficult process, and if you did it wrong it killed the patient. Three months of work, and he was maybe halfway done.
“And how can I test it?’ he wondered. The food gave little pleasure, yet he still couldn’t bring himself to not eat. It was the only joy he found in life at the moment. All around him the lost and dying souls of his attempt to produce more food mocked him. “It’s your fault,” he hissed.
“You volunteered.”
He spun around, searching for the voice. Only dying plants and buckets of dirt were there.
“Maybe if I covered the whole floor with dirt,” he mumbled, and looked at the buckets. He shook his head. Even if he dumped every one of them on the floor, it wouldn’t be an inch of dirt. The data said he needed a lot more. He looked back at the bathroom, then at a nearby dying bean plant. Fertilizer?
Day 1,641
Dave dropped the box he’d just taken from its storage place onto his table. “No,” he said and tore at the wrapping. The mold was inside as well. The plastic containers, biodegradable for use on TRAPPIST later, were eaten through. “No, no, no,” he said as he yanked the box and send them cascading on the floor. The mold was throughout.
He ripped one open and the contents were the wrong color. The smell was musky.
“Wow, that’s tough.”
He looked at Huey, who was painting a fresco on the habitat wall. Dewey was a few meters away, admiring the work.
“Yeah,” Dave said. Every last box.
“Finish the program?” Dewey asked.
“I don’t know,” Dave said. The habitation area was strewn with moldy food packets, busted buckets, dead bean plants, and dirt was everywhere.
Dewey lit a cigarette. “Whatcha gonna do now?” the robot asked him.
“Yeah,” Joan agreed. “What’s the plan?” She was in her pilot jumpsuit, just like the last time he’d seen her, training for the mission.
“I don’t know,” he repeated.
“Better figure it out,” she said. “I’m going to die if you don’t.”
Dave’s stomach grumbled and he wiped his mouth with a filthy hand. How long had it been since he’d eaten? The air felt hot, and humid. He stumbled to the cryostasis chamber and activated it. The lights came on and the door slid open. He didn’t have to strip, the last of his clothes had rotted off him weeks ago.
He rolled into the chamber and pressed the glowing button. The lid began to slide closed.
“What about us, boss?” Huey asked.
“Yeah, we’re going to be lonely!” Dewey agreed.
“Keep the ship running,” he said. “Tell Joan I love her.”
The lid slid closed, fluid flowed in, the cold followed. Darkness took him.
“This is Dave Parker, the man who’s going to take Prometheus ahead of Victoria. Dave, this is Lieutenant Commander Joan Walker.” Steve had been introducing the command crew for Victoria at the Prometheus launch party.
“We’ve met,” Dave said.
“Oh?” Joan asked.
“Carnegie Mellon, we were there the same year.”
Joan screwed up her face then affected a small smile. “I think I remember you. Well, good luck. We’ll see you in two hundred years or so.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” Dave said, and smiled back.
The cold embrace stretched on, and on.