“I want a wide margin of action.”
“We will decide the strategies. You will carry out the military operations.”
“I am going to have the androids, obviously.”
“We will place all the means at your disposal, but until your assignment has been confirmed by the Staff, we don’t want to commit ourselves. You must steal them.”
A naughty smile appears on Eve’s face.
“You will make a false request for intervention, a joke for you who knows the information systems better than anybody else. The headquarters will place at your disposal equipment and crew. You and your team will get into the androids during the loading of the software, taking its place.”
At the end of the dance, he takes her by the arm. “Now let’s enjoy the evening.”
They reach the table and admire the night landscape. A kilometer below, the town is an uninterrupted expanse of lights. Small aircrafts speed around the towers and a spaceship with two thousand seats is landing in the new spaceport.
A waiter arrives with an enormous bunch of red roses.
“This to show you how much we appreciate your work,” says the officer. He looks straight in Eve’s eyes. “Defense needs people like you.”
She wavers. “I cannot.”
“Why?”
“I must carry out a project.”
“What’s it about?”
“One day I will tell you.”
They have a marvelous dinner: abyss fish and pollen from the sea flowers of Europe (6). At the end, the woman touches lightly his hand. “Thank you, Marcus.”
“This evening I have lived emotions I thought definitely lost.”
She has a serene look. “I am no longer the woman I was. What you see is only appearance: now I am using a program that simulates my past behavior. The project I have spoken you about requires much greater capabilities, and I can face it only because I am not the same any more. Do you want a demonstration?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“I said yes!”
“OK, but after do not complain.”
Eve stares at him. The man feels stunned. He tries to put his hands up, but he cannot move. He is going to shout, but no sound gets out of his throat. While he wonders what is happening, his memories start flowing unrestrainable. His body and his mind belong to somebody else!
He collects all his energies. “Stop it!”
Still confused, he shakes his head. “What’s happened?”
“I got into your brain through the neural chip.”
“You violated the access code!”
“Don’t worry; I will not reveal it...” Eve chuckles. “Do you want a description of your day?”
“Forget it. Tell me how you did it, instead.”
Eve becomes serious. “I have installed programs I created myself. I am very different from anyone else in Net, but this is the direction they will evolve.”
Her eyes are sparkling with joy. “I am going to guide them.”
(6) Jupiter satellite.
RAID
“I am finishing the controls,” announces the robot, tapping Eve’s shoulder with one of his eight stainless steel legs.
She lowers her eyes over her body, an armored android. Now she is in the army headquarters. Her companions are lined up along the corridor, sparkling in their metal shields, still lifeless. The belts holding her against the wall open, and she takes a few steps forward.
“This model was delivered a few days ago,” goes on the technician quivering with enthusiasm. “A jewel. Ah, sorry. I must continue my work.” He bends towards another arrival.
Half an hour later, he gathers the group. “Twenty. You are all here. Now call at the armory, then go to the garage. The rest of the equipment is in the vehicles. Have a good day!”
Ten minutes later the Elects are speeding along a country road. All around, an expanse of light green wheat. The hills low on the horizon are covered with a clear blue haze softening the details. From time to time, the bends of a river with slimy waters appear in the distance. They reach a villa surrounded by railings, turn into the first side path and drive along up to the back. They park behind a mulberry-tree and launch a drone: an azure disk as large as a doughnut, with three tiny rotors at its center.
Eve activates the virtual reconnaissance. The immense mass of information processed by the on board computer is transmitted to her visual field. She finds herself in the digital reconstruction of the house. She runs through the rooms, and moves instantaneously from a place to the other. No one!
“We must find out where they went,” she cries to her companions. “Follow me!”
With a jump, they get over the fence and plunge onto a lawn.
“You, inspect the park,” she orders eight raiders. The others encircle the building and break into it with leveled guns. Eve directs five androids to the second floor. Three others walk down to the basement, the rest remains with her on the first floor.
They enter the dining room. Deserted. Tables decorated with flowers and elegant tablecloths. In the air, the pungent smell of rotten food.
“The dinner was prepared a few days ago,” murmurs a raider.
“What a strange scent…”
They pass next to a stately branched candlestick. “Incense. They held a ceremony.”
They reach a corridor. Small clean rooms are along both sides. Beds prepared carefully. Narcissus in ceramic pots in a row on the shelves. Not a speck of dust. The linen arranged precisely in the drawers; nothing out of place.
They stop in front of rucksacks and suitcases, at the foot of the beds. “They didn’t take anything away.”
“But they left a few days ago…”
“They are coming back!”
“I know what’s happened,” Eve cuts them short.
In her visual field appears a message:
RUN DOWN TO THE BASEMENT, QUICK!
She dashes down the stairs, flings open the steel door of the basement and jumps over the last steps. Now she is in a white room. A few electronic instruments are lined up against a wall. It’s cold.
“I am here…” murmurs Victoria from the adjoining room. The girl is standing in a corner, with a pale face, pointing at a case with a trembling arm. Coagulated blood on the edge. Inside, in a dark red pool, three heads the tops of the skulls missing.
A raider examines the equipment: “That’s a scanner for the brain digitization, and those look like furnaces.” He touches lightly one of them. “Still warm.”
“They were cremated!” shouts Victoria, with her eyes starting from her head.
Eve returns to the first room. She bends over a machine and sets it running. The screen fills with data.
“A short while ago, this tank contained about a hundred souls. But now it is empty.”
Victoria looks like collapsing. “Another mass suicide…”
Eve stares at the numbers. “We entrusted Nihil with finding a system to embark us on the Caravels, but he disappeared. He wants to replace us!” She stops: a message arrived. “I must go.”
Eve strides upstairs, up to the second floor. She enters a corridor covered with fitted carpet. At the end, towers an imposing wood door. The meeting room. An octagonal table at the center. Yellow chairs with comfortable arms like the petals of a daisy.
Adam and three other raiders are standing still in front of the life-size hologram of a dark android standing out from his followers who are along a wall. In a corner, is a server. Eve exchanges a few words with her companions, then bends over and starts it. After a few minutes, she succeeds in logging in and begins inspecting the files.
“I found his diary!”
The others stop rummaging in the cabinets and turn in unison.
The text shines above the table. A few lines are highlighted in yellow:
“The Council is spying me. I punished the novice and Wing, but now all of them must die.”
“He will avenge himself with a latest generation
virus, I am afraid,” articulates Eve. “Impossible to neutralize it.”
She transmits a message to her companions in Net: they must abandon their hideout, immediately!
They continue reading:
“Yesterday I tested the followers' preparation, asking two of them to commit suicide. The younger drew back. The others encouraged him, telling that in a short time all of us would be facing the same fate. On my side, I explained in detail the reasons for the act. At the end I read a sincere impatience in his eyes.”
“Madness!” cries a raider.
They pass over the description of the suicide and arrive at the last lines:
“Now that I have collected the souls in a container, I must reach the transmitter and activate the transfer. On my arrival, I will be carried in triumph by the population. Alpha Centauri will be my kingdom.”
They are all motionless, staring at the transfer date blinking at the bottom, blood red.
NIGHTMARE
@
Night. Eve is lying on a couch, prey to a troubled sleep.
She is standing at attention.
“I want to let you know that I am going to leave the Army.”
The colonel stares at her. “We have just promoted you captain. Why this decision?”
I have been contacted by the Superior Institute of Artificial Intelligence.”
“We have high expectations on you. Don’t you want to think it over?”
“I am honored to serve our country. But very soon I am going to realize the dream of my life.”
The president of the Certification Committee sits at the head of the table. “Welcome, Doctor Dirac. Our work requires competence and integrity. As you can imagine, there are many interests at stake and the pressures are strong. In spite of this, we always succeeded in avoiding interferences.”
“The evidence is incontestable,” states the president of the committee.
Eve reacts with anger:“It’s all false!”
“We must avert every suspicion from the institutions.” He stares at her in silence, and then articulates his request: “I want you to resign.”
Words like daggers. “You, who knows me better than anybody else, have doubts about my integrity?”
“I don’t question it,” he answers with bitterness. “But we cannot fight a battle already lost from its very beginning.”
The waves break over the rocks.
Sprays of foam.
Red spots, larger and larger.
She is lying.
Her limbs broken,
her empty stare towards the sky.
“Nihil is on board.
We will not be able to embark on the Caravels.
It’s all over!”
A multitude of spaceships, big and small, is lined up in front of three enormous starships. Silence is total.
“Three, two, one, zero!”
A thrill runs through the crowds while a dart of fire spurts from the bowels of the three giants.
Suddenly, a globe of fire widens from the flagship.
A moment later, everything disappears.
Eve wakes up, bathed in sweat.
DEPARTURE
Mars, August 3rd 2300.
They swarm out of towns. They advance into the stony desert, climb the hills and the promontories and then stop in groups, millions of androids and robots, glittering in the sunshine. All of them turned towards the same sector of sky vibrant with life.
Twenty thousand kilometers above, a multitude of spaceships, big and small, is lined up by the orbiting stations, in front of three enormous spheres of titanium and beryllium.
Time has stopped not only here, but also in the other planets of the solar system, in the icy outposts of the deep space as well as in the comfortable worlds inside the computers. Everywhere. And everybody enjoys the same striking realism offered by virtual reality. Everybody lives it.
In the spectators’ minds, the images of the Martian surface crowded with metal creatures and the superb views of the Caravels at close range, follow one another. Some reporters run through the endless corridors, others speak excitedly from rooms packed with androids and equipment, but only the privileged few are on the bridge. All of them praise the characteristics of the Caravels, itemize the steps of the project and interview its makers. A deluge of information inundates the inhabitants of the solar system.
“We are lucky to live this historical event.”
“This is the apotheosis of human civilization.”
“A new one is born. Nothing will stay the same as before.”
Suddenly all the shots concentrate on the Caravels. The countdown is finishing. Silence is total.
“Three, two, one, zero!”
A thrill runs through the crowds and a moment later, a dart of fire spurts from the bowels of the three giants. A powerful jet of protons and helium penetrates the vacuum silently. The Caravels shake, and then leave the orbit lazily, towards the star-spangled sky.
In the middle of the bridge, a large space pervaded by the buzzing of the nuclear propellers, stand the Fleet Admiral and his officers, in full uniforms, turned towards the panoramic window. Now the thousands of vessels that crowded around the Caravels are only twinkling dots.
“We will colonize other worlds.”
No one is more touched than they are. They have conceived this project and believed in it. They have followed its realization step by step, and now the fateful moment has arrived, they entrust their future to it.
C573Y is among them. Seemingly, he shares the general excitement, but actually he is deeply worried about the many uncertainties weighing on the mission. As in the outward voyage, he will return to the Earth via a laser beam, but only after having fought the most important battle of his life. Not only his life.
IN ACTION
Huge spaceships of unprecedented complexity. Millions of parts that neither the endless controls carried out on each component, and the several integration tests, can guarantee totally reliable. After departure, alarms sound frequently.
Computers transfer swiftly the working load to the functioning equipment. An activity that only the redundancy, carefully planned by the engineers, allows to perform in real time. In the corridors an unceasing coming and going of maintenance robots and spare part carts.
Unavoidable software malfunctions, since not even the most powerful simulation programs can test billions of code lines thoroughly. The automatic repair systems intervene promptly, making changes and executing tests.
Security is on alert. If an enemy strikes, he will act just after departure. The antiviral programs inspect the most hidden places of Alphacity, the virtual town of the Caravels. Hundreds of warnings which require exhaustive checks. The physical world is guarded by Security. Androids with blue shields are marshaled on the bridge, as well as in the interminable corridors of the starships. Microscopic fixed and flying cameras lie in ambush, ready to pick up the least movement and transmit it to diagnostic programs that analyze the data with unerring precision. In the armory, hundreds of brand-new war robots, ready to come back to life at the first danger, are lined up along the walls.
On the third day, the spacecrafts enter the asteroid belt. They advance resolutely, protected by thick ionized gas armor to neutralize the cosmic powder. From time to time, powerful lasers dispel the absolute black space with sudden flashes, turning small meteorites into boiling plasma clouds. Ninety-eight hours after departure, the vacuum around the Caravels lights up with a dazzling glare, like a star. The beam of an antimatter gun has hit the core of a tiny comet, heating it to the temperature of the sun. Nothing left, matter turned into intangible radiation.
The atmosphere in Alphacity is electric. Moments of discoveries for its inhabitants, wandering, prey to curiosity, in the virtual town of the Caravels, considered a planning masterpiece. In their faces, one can see the joy of those who go towards a long awaited future, convinced of seeing it achieved soon.
@ Virtual town of Alphacity, quantum compute
r QC07A, Caravels.
There is a ceremonial atmosphere in the large semicircular hall, where the parliament and the government of the fleet meet for the first time. They are all standing, with the Admiral at the center, in full dress, turned towards the audience.
The streets and squares, the stadiums and theatres are crammed with people. Soft, ancient music spreads; music which speaks of the hopes of a people, their brotherhood and magnificent destiny. It is a masterpiece of a tormented genius, which the inhabitants of the Caravels are fond of because of its impressive style. Now the Alpha Centauri anthem is heard everywhere. When silence returns, the Admiral stares at the audience, then speaks:
“The moment that we all have dreamt of, has arrived. Ten years ago, at the beginning of the Alpha Centauri project, even though our Government understood the impact of the distance on the relationships with the homeland, it did not want to grant us autonomy. But we held on, because a people needs the freedom to choose its own future. And we are destined to govern, since four light years will separate us from our homeland, a distance sufficient to make any influence impossible. They have understood, and today we are celebrating the birth of the Alpha Centauri Republic, the fifth state of the Confederation after the Earth, the Moon, Mars and Net.”
The population replies with lengthy applause. The Admiral stretches out his arms. “Today I have the honor of presenting the parliament and the government to you…”
He grimaces, clears his throat and starts again. But he can pronounce only a few syllables, because the rest of the sentence sticks in his throat. His forehead is beaded with sweat. He staggers and props himself up against the table, but a moment later, his strength gone, falls to the floor. Still conscious, with bright eyes, he stares at the audience that is affected by the same disease at the same time.
Terror spreads through the vast crowds. They are about to start a desperate flight, when the same illness reaches them. After a few minutes, they all are lying on the ground, with glassy looks. Everyone can see a man dressed in dark clothes. Even though no breeze is blowing, his suit and hair are flapping as if in the middle of a storm. He approaches to touch their faces lightly. Then he announces with a devilish sneer: “I am taking possession of your life.”