It has been suggested that as machines become more and more technologically advanced, they gain the sentient ability to dream. To think for themselves. To feel. No one will argue with the knowledge that machines are not alive, yet there are certain cases where it is hard to refute the fact that they are intelligent. Problem solving, even.
Add a soul to that machine, and who's to say what it is? Alive? Inanimate?
Somewhere in-between?
She had a feeling. It was something she couldn't quite place, very far away. No, no. Not quite so far. Besides, Christa had always known it was going to happen, so why was she so fearful?
Esk?
I'm sorry, Harlan. I'm going to have to take over for a while.
***
"…What's going on?"
"Pressure stabilizing. I think!"
Shadows. She could see shadows when she opened her eyes… But that was all. What was going on?
"Suzee, can you re-integrate Christa back into the ship?"
Pain. She hadn't felt pain since she could remember, and yet there it was. Her whole body felt like it was on fire.
"I don't know!"
"Power levels stable. Air levels being replenished. Everything looks fine."
Christa closed her eyes again, and slipped back into the darkness.
***
She felt their mental cries… Death, hate. Could a Lumanian hate? Yes, though it was difficult. The Spung, fierce adversaries for years, had finally bested the little two-ship fleet with a new type of Starcruiser. The Lumanians had been forced to obliterate it, and both sides had already suffered heavy losses. Christa desperately searched for the mental signature she recognized as Esk's, though the psionic jumble of static prevented her from locking onto any one Lumanian individually. They were scared, and Christa was still so far away…
They knew all along it would happen. It was their reason they brought three ships instead of two… Christa would go to the Sol System. Ryst… Ryst would have to be lost. It was so that the Dh'I would be able to make it back to Lumanian space with most of the crew still alive. The battle would cost them all heavily. The ability to see into the future carried a terrible price. Yes, you could be ready for it, and yes, the future could be altered… But things that were meant to pass would always happen in one way, shape, or form. At least, Christa thought, at least they had the Dh'I.
I am coming! She cried.
No!!
No? Why no?
We are already performing the ritual to release Ryst's soul back into the Beyond. The ship is dead in space. She cannot function any more.
Who's voice was it? Christa recognized it. What was the ritual? Why…?
Do you understand, Christa?
***
"Someone check on Christa!"
"I'm not getting a pulse…"
"She's an android!"
"…No. No, she's not."
***
It was worse than she feared. The Ryst was quite badly damaged. The wing on one side had been torn out. Destroyed. And what was worse, Christa could not feel the living soul within it.
Released back into the Beyond… What did that mean?
Before she knew what she was doing, Christa had allowed the crew to make a Spaceway connection. How was she to know that it would be the last time she would see one of them? There was no harm in exploring the damaged ship… After all, the Spung vessel was surrounding her. It was in pieces. Dead crewmembers of both races floated around her in space… It was gruesome. Terrible.
Maybe she shouldn't have stayed?
A data transfer arrived through the Power junction. Christa routed it to Rosie, and she played it. It was the ship's log… There were four or five entries on it, but most notably, Esk, former Captain of the Christa, Co-Captain of the Ryst, had logged the very last entry. He was alright. He'd escaped.
He had set the Ryst to explode!
***
More shadows. Weak flickers of light and dark passed in front of her eyelids. Weakly, Christa tried to recall what was in those other entries. Perhaps, she thought, they would be comforting to her in these last moments.
Christa knew she was dying. She knew there was nothing anyone could do.
Ignore them all, she thought. Your children. You haven't failed them… They will still have the ship, it will just be without you.
Her mind reached out, grasping onto what she could. It was comforting to feel that the controls still welcomed her mind even though it was dying.
Play the log, she whispered, searching through the computer and locating the correct one.
"We hereby release Ryst's spirit back into the Beyond. She has served us well, and she departs knowing that she may one day serve us again. If it is the will of the gods for her to find peace in the afterlife, we accept this, knowing that she has done her duty."
"I am now transferring myself into the computer," the Lumanian android said. It was all very ritualistic. Everything was according to a script.
The android opened a panel on the Helm. It crossed the wires. It rearranged circuits and connectors.
It turned, and looked at Esk.
"Ryst," Esk said.
"Yes."
Lines of code appeared on the viewscreen. Ryst's thoughts. Her dying words. It was a log.
The mechanical façade began to melt away, replaced by the beautiful face of a Lumanian in her prime…
She smiled at them.
And then she died.
The ritual. Unknowingly, Christa had gone through all the steps, and was now lying, dying, on the floor of the Command Post.
Suddenly she remembered that she had never actually detached her coded thoughts from the computer. There was still a chance for things to be alright again!
Thelma, turn the screen on.
By forcing the Crystal into the Helm, Christa had given Thelma back her memory, as cracked as it was. It had allowed the android to stabilize the life support systems on the ship. It had probably saved the crew… And now? Now Thelma was going to save Christa.
The screen flickered on, a harsh light suddenly bathing the crew in bright green. Lines of code in binary flitted by. Zeros and ones. Spaces, dashes, and underscores…
Thelma. You need to convert the words into a form they can read.
Suzee approached the screen, reaching out to it as if confused. "…I thought you said Christa was gone…?"
Rosie stepped up next to Suzee, also looking at the screen. "I did. She's not breathing…"
Suzee wasn't listening to Rosie anymore, though.
"Rosie, look…" Suzee pointed to the yellow numbers. "You see that?"
Rosie squinted at the slowly scrolling text. "…The ones. They're forming Rigelian words."
As Catalina read off the words, Suzee translated. "…Grey cable in the primary engine room. Dis… Wait. She's not sure of that word…"
Catalina was quite interested in historical Rigelian culture. She'd even, at one point, studied the old language. It was a language no one really used anymore; since they'd come to the Sol system, the language had either evolved into a radically altered dialect, or been discarded altogether in favor of the sector's common language.
"Dismantle the grey cable I hooked up," Suzee finished. She squinted. "…That's not quite the translation, but that's the best Cat can do with such short notice."
"We have to get down there," Harlan said, grabbing Suzee's arm and pulling her away from the screen. "Whatever it is, we have to… to…"
"Do you even know what Christa's talking about?" Suzee asked, arching her eyebrows.
"I'd been working on the wiring when this all started," Commander Goddard mused, leaning against the Helm. "And I know Radu was down there for a while. He might have seen what Christa did."
"There's only one way to find out!" Rosie exclaimed cheerfully, punching up the communications channel that would reach throughout the ship.
***
"Hey, Radu? Radu? Bova? Can either of you hear me?"
Radu lay nearly motionless on the floor. What a day… He'd gotten sucked into the jumptube network, spit out in the cargo hold, and had mercifully fallen unconscious seconds before he felt his head was about to explode due to a very unexpected gravity loss and depressurization.
"Mm. Rosie?" He pushed himself up on his elbows. "I'm here. Got a terrible headache, but… Is everything alright?"
"Radu, do you know anything about… a grey cable? Christa's… I think she's telling us to remove it."
Radu's back cracked painfully as he managed to sit up. "Yeah, I know what that is. I helped her install it."
There was a pause at the other end. "…Can you get to the engine room?"
"I think so. The jumptubes kept spitting us back out into the cargo hold, though. I'm gonna take the corridors. It's not a far walk."
"Alright… Command post out. Call us when you're there."
"Radu out."
He forced himself to his feet, took one step, and tripped over Bova.
For a long time, he lay there, unwilling to move.
"You wanna get your knee out of my ribcage?"
"Bova?" Radu pulled himself forward a little, sitting up again, and turning to face the Uranusian. It was still dark in the hold, and he couldn't really see any of his features, except for the slight spark that was flitting between the two points of Bova's antenna.
"Did I hear Rosie say somethin' about getting to the engine room?" Bova asked, sitting up. It felt like he'd fallen quite a good distance… Then he remembered that the gravity had been out, and he probably had fallen quite a good distance. Grunting in pain, he stood, dusting himself off. Not to far away, he heard Radu do the same.
"Yeah."
There were lights in the distance, leading off into the corridor. "Let's go then."
***
It was an interesting sensation… Christa felt herself slipping away, but fought to hold on at the same time. Her soul seemed to be holding to her body by a mere thread, as if any sudden movement could easily sever the connection. What had Rosie said? She wasn't breathing. Was it too late? Was she really going to die? The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to stay with this crew. To teach them, to learn from them. Her job was to teach, and instead, she'd learned so much.
And there was so much they had left to learn from each other. Christa would not let go yet.
"Rosie? Commander? Radu here. Anyone there? We're in the engine room. There was some… electrostatic charge… uh… Bova took care of it."
Rosie flicked on the channel again. "Radu! Okay, there's a readout on the screen. Is there a grey cable anywhere?"
There was the sound of something heavy being moved around before Radu answered, "It was under an access panel. It's just an ordinary cable… I thought she was doing regular maintenance at first."
Rosie looked at Suzee. Suzee looked at the screen then at Catalina. "…Disconnect it."
***
The wrenching pull was uncomfortable, but that was only because she could feel. Seconds later, it stopped, and Christa felt herself fully reintegrated with the ship in a matter of seconds. It was the oddest sensation, except that in reality, she felt nothing at all. The separation from her living self had been so absolute, so easy…
It would have been so much easier had you done it earlier, she thought to herself. You were too selfish. You wanted to be with the crew so badly.
I still am. I just… can't talk to them anymore.
…Thelma?
As she re-learned how to use the limited spectrum of senses she had, she focused in on the body of the human girl, lying unmoving next to the Helm. Christa was surprised how much it had ended up looking like her…
Okay, Thelma. Let's get you back.
It didn't take much concentration… Actually, it was rather easy to remove the androids still-human parts and integrate them back into the ship itself. It wasn't long, at least by her standards, that Thelma's features reemerged. The silver wire hair, metallic arm guards… She was still in Catalina's Starcademy uniform, of course. It almost gave her a more human appearance…
Harlan reached down, tapping the metallic plate on Thelma's head. "Her crystal."
Miss Davenport stood, eying the damaged access panel of the Helm with slight worry. It was still sparking. "I'm afraid I'd electrocute myself if I went after it," she remarked, nervously.
The door to the ComPost opened, admitting Bova and Radu.
"Finally. We made it back…" Bova said. He was about to say something else, along the lines that he knew something was going to go wrong, when Radu wisely interrupted.
"Did it work?"
Harlan pointed to the Helm. "Bova. Get Thelma's crystal."
Bova looked at the android, then to the Helm. Unfortunately, getting stuck in the Cargo Hold had caused him to miss just about everything that happened.
Darn.
"Why is Thelma's crystal in the Helm?" he asked, reaching in, not even flinching as several thousand volts of electricity arched across his hand.
"Just give it to me," Harlan snapped, reaching out for it. Bova, shrugging, handed it over.
Harlan replaced the crystal. Seconds later, Thelma's grey eyes opened. She said nothing, instead fixing everyone with a rather curious stare.
Which was odd, Thelma thought, as she shouldn't be able to feel curiosity.
They all waited. They wanted to hear that she, too, was alright.
Thelma tilted her head. "The Christa wishes me to inform you that… she says hello."
End