Chapter 7
Silicon Nightmare
Mr. Carnes if you have no interest in our report you are welcome to leave the room.
Molecular structures do not match anything on record.
Say android did your mother have any children that lived?
Warning, deck 1, fire in cryogenic compartment.
Proxima either shut up or shut down!
Module may cause equilibrium errors.
21 percent magnesium, 15 percent nickel-iron, the rest trace elements.
Why is everything on this ship grey?
No evidence of any known method of construction.
Warning, cryotube unit#4 life sign instability detected.
It's some kind of spaceborne creature no one's ever seen before?
How many emotions have you felt since your activation?
Core bypass requires a rest or hypersleep cycle.
What if we had… an accident in the launch bay?
Danger, cryotube unit#4 cycle interrupted.
Don't worry, it's just routine maintenance.
Chemical traces indicate there may have been life on the planet before it was destroyed.
My findings do warrant an archeological expedition.
It's just an atypical rock formation, and that's what your report will read! Clear?
Targeting accuracy is inadequate, we need to increase the unit's processing speed.
Forgive me, Proxima.
(Static)
Proxima suddenly found he was active and feeling disoriented. His eyes opened to near-pitch blackness. At first he thought his photoreceptors were malfunctioning, but as they adjusted he realized the lights in the cryotube were off. Fumbling around, he toggled the switch and found himself staring at the thick plexiglass of his sealed cryotube. He reached down to disconnect the cables from his body when –
All sensory information was suddenly gone as his CPU reverted to a basic input/output mode. Even his sense of dismay at something that hadn't happened since his early activation days faded away into nothing. Though he wasn't aware of it, he spoke aloud:
"Warning, core memory malfunction. Flash anomaly detected."
It was a summary of what had already been detected and reported to his CPU directly. His brain was speaking to itself. The event only lasted 50 picoseconds, but Proxima had to wait the excruciatingly long period of 10 seconds. 6 for his mouth to read the message, and another 4 for his body and brain to re-synchronize. It was like being paralyzed.
His designers had called the event a "crash" or "freeze". During his early days, Proxima would remain deactivated until his design team diagnosed and fixed the problem. As time passed and his brain developed, further malfunctions became extremely unlikely. So at the end of his "infancy" phase, as it was jokingly referred to, that feature was removed. Either way Proxima loathed it – the symptom was almost as bad as the disease.
This time, instead of irritation or extreme disorientation, Proxima was worried once he'd re-synchronized. He had experienced minor data and motor control errors before, but never anything this serious. A core memory error could affect his skills or even his thought and emotional patterns. The only way to rewrite his core memory was to "flash" it with ultraviolet light pulses. His brain had numerous safeguards against erroneous flash re-writes, how could they all have failed? To repair a flash error, Proxima would need a fully-equipped optronics laboratory, which the Galileo didn't have.
Proxima quickly disconnected himself. He started to climb out, but found his cryotube still sealed. The lights in the hypersleep chamber beyond were also out. He leaned forward to pull the manual override. With a sharp hiss the cryotube came loose.
Instantly Proxima's body jerked at the sound. Suddenly he realized he was actually panting. 128-2's did have a functional breathing system, but it was actually a thermal exhaust mechanism. His servo-motors were suddenly drawing more power than actually needed and causing him to overheat. Could this be a symptom of his malfunction?
Whatever it was, the effect was very brief. In a moment his motors powered down and he started breathing normally. Not caring to speculate, he pushed the lid away climbed out of the cryotube. Again he found himself in pitch darkness.
"Lights," he commanded aloud. Nothing happened.
"Haddock, lights," he repeated, still nothing.
Fortunately his cryotube light was enough for him to fumble over to a console. He touched the blank screen and the room slowly began to light up. The console also became active. Proxima was taken back by the status lines.
Fire detected.
Security breech detected.
All systems normal.
Proxima stared at the display with growing confusion. If there had been a fire, the sprinkler system would have doused the room, but the floor was dry. A security breech should have caused warning klaxons to sound off, or a silent alert to appear on the console, but there were neither. Even more inconsistent: the chronometer showed that out of the solar half-year required for the return voyage, barely a week had been logged.
His mind was racing to assimilate all these new developments. So he didn't immediately notice anything when the lights returned to full illumination.
"All systems normal?" How could that be if he was awake? Proxima didn't have the same life-support needs as the others, but his activation and unsealing of the tube should have raised a flag. On that note, why was he awake? The display mentioned nothing of the rest of the crew, so he turned to check on them. He stopped in mid-turn, his body temperature dropping sharply.
The cryotube immediately opposite his had been shattered, and the occupant was missing. Proxima turned his head sharply. The next cryotube and the next… all of them had been compromised. The crew was missing.
His body was actually trembling from his again-overloaded motors, panting to relieve the excess heat. He was suddenly acutely aware of the humming of the computers in the room, the sterile cold air on his exposed artificial skin. It was as if all his senses had suddenly become amplified. Proxima had known fear during his survey of the artifact, but not like this. From cold to hot in an instant; thermal shock wasn't good for his hardware.
It was a simple matter for him to power down his own motors. He leaned against his intact cryotube, still panting. Once his temperature had returned to almost normal, he proceeded to investigate, stepping carefully to avoid plexiglass shards. The cryotube seals had been completely destroyed. Some of the life-support monitoring sensors and intravenous tubes had actually been ripped away. There was no sign at all of the crew.
Then his attention was drawn to one of the tubes that had not been shattered like the others. Upon closer investigation, he found the tube had been manually overridden as he had done. The seal was mostly intact, except for a ragged hole that appeared to have been melted or corroded through. Small blackened spikes of disfigured glass hung down the inside of the hole, like melted candle wax. The hole was approximately a quarter-meter in diameter, and situated right above where someone's head would normally be.
Proxima stood completely still, trying to see the logic. Cryotubes were designed to withstand hard vacuum – a human with a sledgehammer would be hard-pressed to make a dent. The small handguns kept in the weapons locker could shatter the tubes, but the extent of damage done would require most, if not all of the firepower on board. Extensive solid-state weapons fire could have triggered the fire alarm, but there was no sign of shell casings or bullet-impacts anywhere. Laser weapons wouldn't shatter the tubes in this fashion either, and there was also no sign of spent battery capsules. The sheer level of force was frightening, but appeared very specifically directed at the tubes. Aside from the few torn sensors and intravenous tubes, nothing else in the room appeared disturbed.
As for the one tube that had been corroded, Proxima knew of no such substance that could affect cryotubes. The lack of corrosive damage inside the tube was also puzzling – how had the substance been applied so precisely? Corroding plexiglass could also have triggered the fire alarm, but that didn't explain why the sprinklers hadn't activated. Strong corrosive chemicals usually released any number of toxic gasses; why would an assailant such a dangerous agent on this one specific tube? The tube was #4, and had belonged to Dr. Crease.
Five out of the ten tubes in the room shattered, one corroded. Of the four left intact, one was his, and the others were not in use. Proxima could only conclude that the crew – specifically the humans – had been kidnapped. Why? They were still in deep space, who could have done this? Why was he omitted? The destruction of the tubes and the missing crew should have raised all kinds of flags and alerts. Why was the display reporting normal status?
Proxima felt like he was being assaulted with information and only barely able to keep pace. In an emergency… what was he supposed to do? His mind was racing such that he couldn't even compute a clear first priority. He thought to check the auxiliary control room, but thought better of it because of all debris on the ground. That made his first object simple: he could hardly investigate the ship barefoot and in his shorts. As he hurried off to the lockers, a security camera swiveled to track his movement.
X X X X X
Author's Notes:
I don't know why doesn't recognize percentage symbols, but its bloody annoying. I've been hunting for missing percent signs and replacing with the word "percent". Also there was a scientific error in Proxima's nightmare sequence. He claimed "presence of crystallized carbon implies there may have been life on the planet…" While carbon is the basis of all life as we know it, crystallized carbon, or diamond, forms at a depth of over 100 km below the Earth's surface. (websourse: science.howstuffworks/diamond1.htm) It doesn't seem likely that organic matter would be found at that depth. I've changed the line to simply "chemical traces".
-MA