Flash Master 003: "Thali's Gift"

Advanced Live Encoding Neuro-Cyborg # 14 hung in space high above the planet Menon 7. Its oblong, ungainly four kilometer long hull was in geosynchronous orbit over the capital city Ren Prime. It had been summoned there weeks ago to witness the surrender of the last of the Mena Tarisee rebels.

Most of the hundreds of surveyor craft it had recorded the surrender with, vid ships, audio ships, atmosphere samplers were stored now, hanging from kilometer long racks in the nose of the ship. ALENC #14 had recorded temperature, uniform colors, soil

analysis, dialogue of persons standing in the crowd. It had made a complete history of the event as it happened. When #14 met another ALENC or a library station, its data banks would open and the surrender of the Mena Tarisee rebels would become a part of galactic history.

It was still in orbit, arguably to record a more full history of Menon 7. It was recording a wide range of data. It had probes at the frozen carbon dioxide south pole, a walker visiting a hospital in Ren Prime, each craft recording every detail, sending the data to be stored in ALENC #14’s virtually unfillable quantum data storage banks.

For all else that it was doing, performing historical research, running repair routines, and priming for interstellar travel, it was devoting a relatively large portion of its computing power, 0.67% to a conversation it was having with a woman in a refugee

camp near Ren Prime’s shield generator.

Centuries ago, when the ALENC program had been designed, the engineers realized that humans react differently to machines than they do to other humans. In order to give them a more human face, each ALENC was equipped with a dozen “walkers,”

humanoid androids capable of interacting with humans using a subtle but ultimately artificial set of emotional responses.

It had first interviewed this woman as a routine part of sampling the population of the planet. It sought her out a second time because she had lost her husband and family in the war and provided and excellent human perspective. Why it had returned this time, it wasn’t sure, but it found itself dedicating more and more computing cycles to improving the emotional response.

“Is this what you really look like?” The woman, Thali Minik, asked, squatting in front of the wretched hut she shared with a dozen other war widows.

ALENC’s walker paused. The question puzzled the brain floating in space. “This is the accurate appearance of remote unit #993.”

“No, no.” Thali shook her curly, blond hair and put her hand on the automaton’s. “I mean you, the human in space. Does your face look like this?”

ALENC paused again and switched on the lights in the Life Bay. An inert form floated there in translucent gel. Most of its computational power lie in banks of circuits ranged

around the Life Bay but certain essential features, curiosity, innovation, passion could only be found in life forms and so a genetically engineered human lay at the center of

ALENC #14.

“No,” the automaton said at last. “Remote Unit #993 is only vaguely similar to the human.”

“Could I see it? I mean if I were up there?”

“Yes. I am equipped with an extensive life support system so that repair crews can access my areas. The human body lies in an accessible area.”

“May I see it?”

ALENC was surprised. It was used to asking questions, not being asked about itself. It scanned its records of the official visits it had received in the last four hundred years and also its general operational parameters and concluded that there was no reason the

woman couldn’t visit. The word ‘want’ appeared out of a subsystem linked to the human mind. After a quick analysis ALENC agreed with the subsystem that there did

seem to be a ‘want’ for the woman to visit. “I’ll send a shuttle.” The automaton replied.

ALENC did something like fret as Thali rode into space silently next to the walker. It knew that she was familiar with space travel having been to several planets seeking to escape the war. What it didn’t understand was her motivation for seeing the human. It

was considering doing something it had only done once before. When confronted with human behavior they didn’t understand, ALENCs could increase the neurotransmitter levels in their human brains in an effort to simulate the motivations of the behavior.

This woman had seen a great deal of war and hardship. Perhaps if it stimulated the brain... Reaching a conclusion it ordered micro changes in the levels of serotonin, cortisol, and a dozen other brain chemicals. It didn’t like the feeling, something like being nervous or slightly angry but it hoped it would provide an improvement over the artificial emotion program it ran with the walkers.

The woman strode into the Life Bay under the watch of dozens of ALENC’s sensors, shock monitors measured her weight by the impact she made on the flooring, audio sensors recorded her pulse and breathing, CO2 sensors adjusted for the additional stress

she put on the system. The walker had led her silently into the Life Bay and stood inert in the corner of the room. ALENC found it didn’t know what to say.

The woman strode up to the glass case that the human hung in and stared at it for long seconds. “It’s beautiful.”

ALENC checked against the 23,409,865 objects that it had specifically heard of as being beautiful, scanned its human body, and flailed to reach any conclusion. “What?” it ordered the walker to say.

“It’s beautiful.” She repeated. “It looks like a cross between a baby and a...the creature from Sol. A burd.”

A bird, ALENC knew, was a genetic cousin of man found on more than 950 different planets though not Menon 7. It scanned the body again and agreed that it did look a little like a bird.

“Thank you.” It said.

She nodded as if she had satisfied something. “You must know all about Sol.”

“There are a great many Sol parables.”

She shook her head. “Not the parables. The real Sol.”

It shook the walker’s head in return. “No one knows if Sol was real.”

“It has to be.” Thali said. “Humans didn’t just appear one day. We spread from somewhere. You must have the real location hidden somewhere in your memory banks.”

“I’m afraid not. Let me show you back to the shuttle.”

She whirled on the walker, placing her back against the glass holding the body and hissed. “No. I won’t go back. I want to go with you. I want to go to Sol.”

ALENC was completely taken aback. “You don’t want to travel with me. I spend months alone between planets. Let me take you back.”

Thali slid to the side of the case revealing a metal capsule stuck to the glass. “It’s a bomb.” She opened her hand revealing a small device with blinking green light. “I’ll blow us up. I swear. Take me to Sol.” She was crying.

“I don’t understand why you would do this. Let me take you back to Ren Prime. You have a home there.”

“A home there? A home there?” She cried in hysterics. “I’m a Parnine. A Parnine refugee on planet full of Shuleys and Menons. You know what Parnine widows do on Menon 7? They become whores. Already the women in my hut have started a

collective. I lost my son and husband to those bastards. I’ll go to hell before I give them my body. Please, take me to Sol.”

ALENC #14 evaluated the explosive and the woman. The device was a standard high thermal device. Not destructive to the ship as a whole but almost certainly fatal to the human behind the glass and so to ALENC. As for the woman, she was displaying posttraumatic stress, possibly psychosis. He calculated a 66% chance she would actually detonate the explosive if challenged. On the other hand, she would have to sleep sometime. A 0.5% concentration of Xlynelan while she slept should render her

unconscious. He could disarm her and return her to the planet without risk.

“O.K. You can stay with me.”

*

ALENC had lowered the lights for the woman when she showed signs of sleepiness. She had propped herself up against the glass under the explosive and sung quietly to herself until exhaustion had taken her. ALENC had begun releasing Xlynelan into the

atmosphere fifteen minutes later. When her breathing indicated she had gone deeper than mere sleep, he sent a walker in to remove her.

The walker could see her clearly in infrared, a hot, glowing body. ALENC found itself going over and over the song she had been singing “I shall never be home till I walk again beneath the light of Sol.” There were more than 4,000 variations of it logged in

ALENC’s memory.

On impulse it had the walker touch the woman’s hair. A complete record was made of course, length, coarseness, odor, but ALENC was made painfully aware by the hormones in its human that it did not actually know what it was to stroke someone’s hair. It thought she was pretty in a tired, careworn sort of way.

It wondered what she dreamed. Its human dreamt of walking city streets and walkers coupling in the halls like humans and things that made no sense but were only shapes or moods.

It ordered the walker out of the room, recalled the last of its remote units and gave its departure flight plan to ground control. By the time she awoke, Thali and her host were deep in the heart of space. The bomb, however, was missing.

*

Remote Unit #987 walked into the large research bay and waited quietly. Thali stood in the study pod jiggling her thumbs and rolling her eyes back and forth blindly as she ran spool after spool of data across her consciousness.

“Whatever planet we’re at, I’m not interested in landing.” She said without stopping the memory dump.

In the two years she had been traveling with ALENC #14 she had proven to be an excellent Palmet player and fine conversationalist, but she had flatly refused to leave the ship. In fact, most of the time she could be found right there pouring through every

record of Sol, looking for some clue as to its location.

“It’s not a planet, Thali. I need you to come to the Life Pod.”

Thali’s thumbs stopped jiggling. She cut off the data spool with a hand gesture and blinked as sight returned to her eyes. A week after she’d come on board, she’d found the bulkhead to the Life Pod sealed. She’d assumed it was to keep her out. She

followed the remote unit out into the hall.

“Are the planet’s from the Virus Wars still contaminated?” She asked the walker. She could of course speak to ALENC from anywhere on board, but, even after two years, she preferred to talk to someone.

“No.” ALENC had the walker respond. “The viri mutated after no more than a thousand years. Most of those planets have been habitable for more than three millennia.”

“Then why aren’t they occupied now?”

“A few of them are. Most of them were severely depleted before the wars. There’s not a lot to go back to.”

They stepped onto a lift that began moving without a word from either of them. “And,” she persisted, “the Virus Wars are the earliest recorded events in history.”

“The earliest clearly documentable events, yes.” ALENC concurred.

“Then I think I’ve found Sol.”

“You’ve said that before.” ALENC was hesitant.

“Yes, but hear me out.” They stepped off the lift and started down the broad, main corridor. “A standard year is 365.25 days right and a day is 24 hours right? But they’re completely arbitrary which is why no one uses them. Now, what if, a standard year was

one orbital rotation for the origin planet around Sol, and what if a standard day is the axis rotation period for the origin planet.”

“I’ve heard this speculation before.”

“Yes.” Thali insisted. “But I’ve found the planet.”

The walker stopped at the door to the Life Bay. “You’re not kidding.”

“Nope. Check it yourself. “The planet is ARARM 552.3. It’s listed as viri infected by the Magelnon Catalog.”

ALENC scanned the record. The third planet around ARARM 552 was a perfect match.  It was also a complete blank spot in its records. It had only the astrodata.

“Very good.” It said. “Now I have something to show you.”

The bulkhead slid up revealing a Life Bay transformed. There was a strange hospital bed where the gel tank had been and strange bits of equipment lined the walls. Sitting on the bed was a man apparently in his mid twenties. He was bald, muscular, and

naked. He had a thick tube of wires running from the back of his head to a conduit in the ceiling.

Thali grabbed the walker’s hand instinctively. “Who is that?”

The man made a croaking sound then said. “It’s me. It’s my human. I’m the bird.” He got gingerly to his feet.

“By Smarl.” Thali whispered. “It is you. But what happened?”

“I started a bio-generation process shortly after you arrived. It took me a while to make the organs grow.” He took a step forward so that they were facing each other. “I realized that first night that I wanted to touch you.” He caressed her hair gently. “Yes,

it’s much better this way.”

“Are you completely human? Are you free to come and go?”

He shook his head, touching her shoulder. “No, there are bio-cells in the attachment at the back of the human’s head. If the human and the library separate the library will die.”

“No, no.” She said petting his face back. “If you leave the library, it will die.”

“Right,” he agreed slowly. “I am the human, attached to the machine.”

They began a kiss then which she broke off suddenly. Looking down she uttered a short laugh. “Well, you’re a man now.”

He smiled. “Yes I am. And Thali?”

“Yes?”

“I’ve just laid in a course for ARARM 552.

*

ALENC was convinced. He’d had dozens of monitors brought into the Life Bay and he and Thali were sitting side by side watching report after report from his remotes. The planet orbited the sun every 365.25 days. The planet rotated every 24 hrs almost to the

second. It had evidence of nuclear and perhaps even pre-nuclear technology. More importantly, it was teeming with a host of genetic cousins of man, far more than you would expect on a colonized planet.

“Let’s land.” Thali said.

ALENC grimaced. The core systems and life support modules of his ship could separate and land but it was never done. The atmospheric entry and exit were too stressful to be done on a regular basis. “O.K.” he said. “I’ll order a separation.”

He watched her closely as the ship broke apart and the core pod trailed by several support pods started down into the yellow and pink plasma of atmospheric entry. She was so excited she was giggling and it filled him with sorrow. He had no doubt that he

loved her and she loved him but she had come all this way to walk under the warmth of Sol. He doubted very much that she would return with him to the sterility of space. His reverie was interrupted when contact with the bulk of the ship was cut off by the plasma storm. Thousands of voices in his head, voices reporting the status of memory banks, O2 tanks, all the systems of his former self, stopped as surely as if a wire had been cut. He felt so small. Running the core systems was still a large burden but

nothing compared to the huge, dark library he left in space.

On the planet’s surface it was a perfect day. They landed in a large field between the arms of a beautiful snow capped mountain. There was a stream running nearby and some large hoofed mammals grazed near the edge of a thick pine forest.

Thali was out the hatch in a second, laughing and running through the tall grass like a child. He watched her on the monitors. He missed the chatter from the library and felt a duty to return to it but found a larger longing looking out at her. He glanced at a pod

that had landed nearby. He checked it with his mind. Its proton reactor and environmental control were all in order. It could support two humans indefinitely.

There was a popping noise as a thick cable broke off from the back of his head then another and another. Bank after bank of computers registered errors and shutdown.


None of the errors were heard. Alenc was running to catch Thali, laughing wildly. Rolling on the ground he made a mental note about the smell and scratchiness of the grass, then laughed at himself and rolled over to kiss Thali hard on the mouth.