The Life Engineered Read online

  The city-sized Capek maneuvered alongside the Spear of Athena, ignoring the smaller asteroids it bumped into as it waded through.

  “Anhur!” my companion called out on open channel, apparently familiar with the newcomer’s name. “You’re a long way off your journey, my friend. What are you doing here?”

  There was a strange tension and reverence in Skinfaxi’s tone. I wouldn’t have called it fear, but there was a wariness I wasn’t used to hearing. My companion might as well have been talking to the very god whose name the Lucretius bore.

  “Anhur, do you read? Are you damaged? Can we be of assistance?” Skinfaxi continued his line of inquiry.

  “Huh-oh . . .” mumbled Koalemos as his shards started to float around the bridge in erratic patterns.

  “What is . . . ?” I tried to ask, before noticing them myself. The hatches on Anhur’s side had opened, and although I had no reason for jumping to conclusions, I somehow knew the situation had shifted.

  Dozens of rocket-propelled objects disgorged themselves from the newly opened orifices, streaking through space toward the Spear of Athena.

  “Are those—?” I tried to ask.

  “Torpedoes!” Koalemos screamed on the channel. “This isn’t good at all! Get me out of here! Help!”

  Surprisingly, I managed to keep myself calm despite the Von Neumann’s hysteria. The metallic jellyfish all filed out chaotically from the bridge, heading toward a single destination. I followed.

  “Faxi? What’s going on?”

  “Damned if I know, little buddy, but you kids need to evacuate. Impact in seven minutes.”

  “Out! Out! Out!” added Koalemos as he flew down the same path I had taken to get to the bridge.

  I noticed several of my systems shutting down, their processing power redirecting to more pressing concerns. Safety protocols were being automatically suspended to allow broader flexibility at the cost of reliability. The overall feeling and effect of these autonomous changes was reminiscent of the adrenaline rush humans had experienced in stressful situations.

  I scrambled down the access shaft that had replaced the elevators on my journey in. I could see the corridor through which I first arrived, but Koalemos was already flying in the opposite direction.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I choose life!” he answered.

  Instinctively, I started after him, though I knew I was putting more distance between myself and the hatch I’d come in from.

  “The exit is that way!” I yelled through comm channels, still struggling to keep up with the swarm of floating jellyfish.

  “Your exit maybe, but mine is this way and a lot less bad,” he answered as a seventh and eighth shard, including the one that still held the mass driver’s memory core, joined the group flying down the corridor in loose formation.

  We took a turn to the left as a timer manifested in my vision counting down the last minute before impact. We were not going to make it.

  Koalemos got to the end of the corridor—a hatch made up the entire outer wall, flanked by doors on both sides. The hatch was covered in warning signs in several languages, some of which I recognized, along with pictographs. The message was clear—do not open, beware, explosive decompression.

  The countdown at the edge of my sight hit zero before I reached the door. The Spear of Athena was rocked by the impact of a dozen warheads exploding on the other side of the ship. Looking back, I could see the opposite end of the corridor being torn apart by the force of the blasts. An immense wall of fire ignited briefly as the conflagration quickly consumed all the available oxygen as it was being sucked into space.

  My own body was thrown backward by the suddenly rushing air, my thrusters straining to compensate to no avail. Three of Koalemos’s shards, which had little problem fighting the pull, flew to me and grasped my limbs to drag me back to the hatch. Between my own power and the three smaller robots, I managed to make my way to the door as it blew off into space.

  “If you’re still intact, my little friend, try to hurry. Anhur just unleashed another volley,” Skinfaxi warned.

  Nine Capeks flew out into space from the port side of the Spear of Athena. We floated, significantly too close to the dying ship, waiting for my companion to come pick us up. Six minutes later the second volley struck the mass driver, which finally collapsed to the assault. Its structure crumbled as large portions of the massive vessel were torn from the whole.

  As chunks of the murdered ship flew past us, Skinfaxi’s gleaming form emerged from the cluster of expanding debris, dodging the ruins as they flew apart. Seeing the hatch already open, Koalemos and I quickly climbed in as my friend navigated the dangerous asteroid field and vestiges of the Spear of Athena’s carcass.

  “Welcome aboard, friends!” Skinfaxi announced as the little networked Capek and I floated to the bridge. “Enjoy the relative safety while we have it.”

  “This is a lot less unsafe. All my thanks for the ride,” said the little Capek.

  “Don’t get too comfortable. We’re not out of the fire quite yet.”

  Skinfaxi activated the back half of the bridge monitor, essentially turning the spherical room into a fully immersive representation of the space around him. Thousands of pieces from the destroyed mass driver flew past us, while hundreds of asteroids floated in the distance, obscuring the very stars. Behind us, however, Anhur was bullying his way through the remains of his disintegrating victim, in hot pursuit of our own smaller and unarmed ship.

  “I thought you said Capeks didn’t have weapons,” I said, overwhelmed by the situation.

  “Anhur is less usual than usual Capeks,” explained Koalemos, less clearly than I would have liked. “Behind us, that’s a Lucretiusclass Capek.”

  “Okay, what is an explorer doing with an entire arsenal down its throat?”

  “Lucretiuses are always not very small. There are very few things they do not have equipped,” the Von Neumann continued.

  “Because they travel to other galaxies, Capeks like Anhur are built with a significantly larger variety of capabilities,” Skinfaxi clarified. “Weapons are just a precaution against . . . well, whatever might be out there. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to concentrate.”

  On the screen behind us a flash of light off Anhur’s starboard signaled the launch of another torpedo. Calculating its predicted trajectory, it was evident that it was heading toward us.

  “Nineteen minutes and sixteen seconds to impact,” announced our ship.

  “Can you dodge it?” I asked.

  “Nope. Each torpedo is probably as good a pilot as I am. Not as sentient and charming, but more than capable of plotting a collision course. I’m afraid unless we get very creative, we’re not going to make it to the collapsor point.”

  “Ship!” Koalemos called out, eliciting an annoyed sigh from Skinfaxi. “Open your hatch. I might have a plan that might very well not fail.”

  “Done,” Faxi answered.

  One of Koalemos’s shards flew off toward the back of the ship. I couldn’t be sure of his intentions and wasn’t certain I wanted to know either. The stakes being what they were, however, anything was possible.

  “I’m no longer aboard. You can close,” he said.

  The back image suddenly zoomed in on a little robotic jellyfish glistening in the starlight, barely visible in the dark void. If it weren’t for a large blue circle on the interface identifying him and the glow of his central thruster array, the piece of Capek would have all but disappeared in the black.

  “What happens if he loses that shard?” I asked Skinfaxi over a private channel. The thought of being composed of several bodies was unnerving to me.

  “He’ll be that much less of himself,” the ship answered in a somber tone.

  I watched attentively as the little robot we had jettisoned positioned itself within the path of the incoming torpedo. The rest of Koalemos floated around me, seven metallic donuts with arms, seemingly unperturbed by the drama playing out a few thous
and kilometers behind us.

  The shard outside, matching Skinfaxi’s velocity at the time it ejected, had little trouble latching onto the torpedo as it cut through the vacuum toward us, ever accelerating, ever catching up.

  The image blew up some more, concentrating on Koalemos as he proceeded to dismantle panels from the weapon’s surface, digging furiously through its innards, pulling out pieces and sometimes dropping them in its wake. Occasionally, he would reach back at the last second to pick up a stray piece. After a few tense minutes of this, thrusters fired all around the torpedo, dramatically halting its progression in our direction, spinning it back toward Anhur.

  Immediately, Skinfaxi cut his sub–light drive. Touching the wall of the spherical room, I could feel the vibration and humming of the Alcubierre drive building up its charge. There was no reason to think that the much larger Anhur, built for travel between galaxies and equipped with engines designed to fold space itself, wouldn’t have similar capabilities. With any luck, however, his took much longer to activate, and we would be long gone through the wormhole by then.

  “Now might be a good time to sever your link to that shard, my friend.” The suggestion was akin to recommending the removal of an arm.

  “Not quite yet,” Koalemos replied, lost in concentration.

  Looking back, we saw the image of the torpedo speeding away from us and toward the immense Capek hot on our tail. A moment passed before the image disappeared as space-time contracted behind Skinfaxi, launching our bubble of reality toward the collapsor point faster than physics should allow.

  For a moment I felt victorious. We had escaped the monstrous Capek bent on destroying us and, by all appearances, dealt it a parting blow. Glancing around, however, the feeling quickly vanished.

  Koalemos, arguably the hero of the hour, was floating around the bridge, his many bodies moving freely in various random directions, uncontrolled and unfettered. None of the thruster arrays that normally propelled and stabilized him were functional. His tendril-like arms were motionless.

  “Oh crap!” I called out. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Synaptic shock from his quancom network being broken,” Skinfaxi answered, his humor gone, replaced by mild irritation. “Aren’t you built for rescue and repair? Shouldn’t you do something?”

  I didn’t like being snapped at, not after being nearly blown up twice and ensnared by a little twerp of a Capek. How was I supposed to know what was wrong with him? I’d only technically been alive for at most thirty-six hours. I was in no position to rescue anyone. In fact, so far it had been other Capeks that were forced to pull my synthetic ass out of the fire.

  Then again, perhaps it was time I started pulling my own weight.

  Without a word I pushed myself toward the closest of Koalemos’s bodies. There was something melancholy about the pile of lifeless shards floating around the bridge, bumping lightly against one another. I put the thought out of my mind and started pulling the little robot into pieces.

  As I began to disassemble the shard to reach its guts and brains, I accessed all the information about the Von Neumann I had available. There was, to put it lightly, a lot. Luckily, it wasn’t hard to narrow down my field of research. Unlike the data from the Spear of Athena, my logs were neat and tidy. Von Neumann– class Capeks are a fairly unique breed. While all classes of Capeks are drastically different from one another, Von Neumanns are particular in that they rely on a stable, continuous quancom network to hold their consciousness together. The immediate assumption about them, seeing as they behaved like a swarm, was to think they were a collection of individual, linked entities. If that was the case, the removal of a single part of the swarm, while a blow to the whole, wouldn’t have that dramatic an effect. In this case, however, the loss of a shard was almost synonymous to a combined lobotomy and amputation.

  The cognitive shock and subsequent gap in the network left the victim unable to function normally. Like a biological brain, new pathways had to be constructed for the consciousness to function once more. Automated systems might have been able to do the trick, but without external aid the little Capek might remain unresponsive for a very long time.

  There was a long list of things I needed to accomplish to revive the remaining shards of Koalemos. Three dozen of these involved tricking the consciousness into thinking the network was intact. Another handful required replacing systems proprietary to the missing shard (that part took the longest). Then I had to build a brand-new system that would prevent the synaptic net from crashing each time it noticed it was incomplete.

  All of these fixes were temporary. I didn’t have the tools or the means to effect all the required repairs to make the little Von Neumann whole again. The best I could do was patch him up to basic functionality and hope to bring him back to his progenitor, but even then there were no guarantees that he would ever be the same.

  After running a handful of tests to make sure I wouldn’t turn him into the Capek equivalent of a drooling vegetable when I flipped the switch, I looked at the individual-specific files Yggdrassil had uploaded into my memory. Almost all of them were locked down, preventing me from accessing personal information about each Capek on record. Yggdrassil had told me that, should my own on-board systems recognize the need, the file on the specific Capek I was helping would unlock. As I sifted through the directories, two files were flagged as unlocked—mine and Koalemos’s. I sighed in relief.

  The Von Neumann’s file answered several questions I had about the interactions of certain subroutines. Nothing dramatic, but details that could in certain circumstances have caused minor problems with the relationship between the shards and various parts of his personality. I addressed the issues accordingly and started putting the little robot back together. Thankfully, since there was nothing physically broken on him, I didn’t have to repair or modify each of the shards individually.

  As I put in the last few pieces, I went through the file a final time and noticed a strange mistake. It mentioned that Koalemos was a septuanian Von Neumann construct; he was composed of seven shards. I knew one had been destroyed or at best left behind, but there were still seven floating around within Skinfaxi’s belly. It was an odd mistake for such a vital technical document, but I let it go, focusing instead on reviving the little guy. Guys?

  When I looked up, I noticed that we were traveling in the wormhole. Skinfaxi had been silent during the entire operation, maybe frustrated with me, but more likely respecting my need to focus.

  I wished I could take a deep breath before reanimating my patient, but that was another source of human comfort I didn’t have access to. So, skipping any further ceremony and procrastination, I flipped the virtual switch that would awaken our new friend.

  For a moment little more happened than the soft glow of seven thruster arrays warming up as the toruses began to right themselves. Then they each began to rotate and move independently, flying about the bridge slowly. Somehow I could almost feel Skinfaxi looking inward in anticipation.

  “We aren’t destroyed?” Koalemos asked slowly, testing his voice. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

  I could have hugged one of his stupid floating donuts.

  “You did good back there, little guy,” Skinfaxi finally spoke up. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you patched up.”

  “I’ve felt worse . . . and better.”

  “I’m just glad you’re still”—I wanted to say functional but realized that it was insufficient—“alive.”

  “Not unhappy myself.”

  “All right,” I began, relieved to have one more crisis behind me. “Any chance we can go somewhere that won’t blow up?”

  “Aha!” my companion answered, his joviality restored. “I’m way ahead of you, little buddy! I’ve got us on course toward the City.”

  He’d said something about the City before. A whole metropolis where Capeks of all shapes, sizes, and classes congregated. That was where I was meant to go after I had activated. Hopefully, it would prove saf
er than my two previous destinations.

  “Do you think we’ll be able to find some way to preserve Yggdrassil’s Nursery’s mnemonic core there?”

  “Hopefully. Hopefully, we’ll also be able to start figuring out why someone tossed a giant rock at our mother, and what a Lucretius-class is doing lumbering around the Milky Way assassinating Capeks.”

  “How do you propose we do that?”

  “Mmmh . . . I think we’d be better off asking Aurvandil. Before you ask, he’s another of Yggdrassil’s children. Another Leduc-class Capek, though much taller than you. He’s very old and very much the intellectual. He spends most of his time on the City and is usually up to date on current affairs. If anyone knows how to help us, it’s him.”

  Aurvandil . . . The name was elegant, and my data banks told me it was related to the Morning Star of Norse mythology. There was something romantic about that. I was eager to meet this Aurvandil.

  “You managed to not leave behind your progenitor’s Nursery?” Koalemos inquired, nudging me with one of his tendrils.

  “Yes. It’s in Skinfaxi’s care. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t leave it behind.”

  Jonathan . . .

  BABYLON

  We ended up being much closer to the City than I originally thought. As it turned out, the wormhole we were in when I finally reactivated Koalemos was actually the third one in a series that was bringing us ever closer to our destination. I had spent the better part of two days—without sleep—working on our new companion.

  When we dropped out of our fourth and final wormhole, we were only half an astronomical unit away from an enormous gas giant. The monster was roughly five times the size of Jupiter, the largest planet from the original human system. It had giant spirals of dark-amber clouds that were swirling around in tight bands along its equator, feathering softly into brilliant-yellow clouds. I could see seven moons orbiting the giant, but none were our destination.

  Approaching at sub–light speeds, we took several hours to make our way to the City, which turned out to be a modestly sized floating orbital station.