Chapter 1
Corbin
“Stop routine.”
The droning of the computer voice ceased immediately at my command, leaving an almost oppressive silence in its wake.
The information was important, of course, but it wasn’t necessary to pay complete attention in order for me to absorb it.
Something was hovering at the edge of my awareness, something that was important for reasons I couldn’t name. Routine in this case was a distraction.
I opened my eyes and stared up at the plain white ceiling of my room, feeling the somno waves diminishing as the headset gently disengaged from my temple ports and retracted into the headboard of the sleeping unit.
I sat up, puzzled by the lingering image that seemed to fade slowly from my mind.
A man’s tanned face, young, beset with sorrow, familiar and yet not, framed by dark hair streaming back damply in a wind that had no sound.
But it was the eyes — dark eyes, deep as the ocean — that seemed to look into me and lay me bare.
They were like no eyes I could pull from my petabytes of storage.
I had no memory of this person, and yet somehow I knew him, which made no sense at all.
Was it a bit of data that had crossed over to my human brain from my CPU, perhaps an unprocessed image from a previous mission? A dream? A memory?
I’d been told the last two were impossible.
Constructs, even ones of my advanced design, didn’t — couldn’t — dream.
Any memories from before my current form had been activated had been lost in the process which had made me what I now was — and my prior existence was something I had been encouraged not to think about too deeply nor too often.
I had heard tales of constructs being driven insane in the process of trying to remember.
All I was told in my initial briefing was that I had been in a horrible accident and so close to death that the line was blurred, and that I had consented to the process which had made me a construct.
I was assured that my consent had included knowing that all memories would be beyond recall, and that my “life” would be considered as beginning when I awoke from the procedure.
Perhaps that had comforted the “me” who had been, but I admit to having moments of intense dislike of whoever that man had been for making a decision that “I” had no say in.
Still, there was nothing that could be done about it now, and I was pragmatic enough to accept that going back was impossible, so forward was the only option available.
As the last effects of the rest-inducing brain stimulator faded, I stood and moved to the sanitation unit to splash water on my face, a habit I often suspected I’d had long before I’d woken up in my current form.
For a moment, I stared into the small mirror, looking for some familiarity in the light brown eyes that stared back at me.
Mine weren’t nearly as dark as those of the man in my dream, if that was what it had been.
My skin was pale, my features were unremarkable, and my hair was blond and short.
This meant that the man hadn’t been a relative of mine, somehow called up from some buried memory, since we shared no resemblance at all.
If truth be told, I really didn’t care much for my own looks, but I had no more say over them than I had over needing artificial legs to walk or no longer possessing reproductive organs.
Annoyed for reasons I couldn’t really explain, even to myself, I dismissed the man as a product of an incompletely flushed buffer and irrelevant to my current assignment.
That settled, I moved on to the nutrient module to begin the cycle of nourishing my biological components before eliminating the resultant cellular wastes.
There was much to do before the mission briefing.
As I went through my necessary preparations — which included systems checks on my non-biological components as well as physical conditioning of my organic parts — I considered the upcoming mission.
The only information I had been given en route was that it would be yet another underwater survey.
This was hardly surprising, since I had been developed for that purpose.
But there seemed to be far more anxiety surrounding this particular assignment, if the unusually grim expressions and low-pitched mutterings of the crew the previous day were any indication.
It was bad enough to have given me a bit of anxiety about what might be expected of me.
There wasn’t much I could do about it; I was never given access to the mood-elevating pharmaceuticals or mental health therapists available to the human members of the crew.
The somno module I was required to use every night was supposed to purge irrelevant emotions and thoughts from my neural pathways, allowing me to use the maximum amount of my cognitive functions to fulfill the mission parameters.
Unfortunately, as I had discovered over the course of the previous five years, this wasn’t always as effective as the designers of the equipment seemed to believe.
Such reflections were pointless, so I purged the worrisome thought as best as I could and left my quarters.
While I had accommodations on the crew level in order to foster some sense of belonging, it didn’t really work.
Those who shuffled past me in the narrow corridors rarely spoke or even met my gaze.
Some even stared at my legs, which were human-looking enough when not covered by my uniform.
This morning, however, I encountered very few people on my way to the conference room.
Our ship, designated ORV-247 — which stood for Oceanographic Research Vessel — was called the Nautilus by the crew, though it was over three times the size of the fictional vessel that Captain Nemo had commanded.
Despite that, it was hardly spacious, filled as it was with scientific experiments and everything required to keep a crew of a hundred humans, and one construct, alive on and slightly below the perilous seas.
It was a task that required around-the-clock activity, so it was odd to find the hallways relatively empty at the beginning of the workday.
When I reached the meeting room, I saw that Dr. Maia Gail, my handler, was already seated at the small table, along with Captain Deering, the stern but fair military commander of the Nautilus.
Across from her was a person I did not know.
Strange. I had the dossiers of every member of the crew, and this man was not among them.
“Ah, Corbin, thank you for joining us,” Dr. Gail said, giving me a smile that seemed curiously strained.
Dr. Gail had always been kind to me; of all the people I had worked with, she was the one who treated me most like a person.
She had been there when I had woken from my coma, after the surgeries which had saved my life and made me what I am now.
To her had fallen the task of assuring me that although I couldn’t remember anything, the form I now had resulted from selections I had made before the incident which had nearly ended my life.
I was more machine than man, but at least, she said, I was still alive.
Legally, of course, I was a human, since I had been born and not fabricated like a mechanical.
The United Solarian Alliance, in the wake of the massive decrease in Earth’s population after the Climate Catastrophe of 2047, had made saving lives by any means necessary of paramount importance.
This held true even when it meant replacing almost every part possible with biomechanical replicas.
Yet, even a century later, there were plenty of full humans who were either repulsed or offended by constructs.
I was never certain if it was because I had no memories of my time spent as a human, and therefore no real past that could be related to, or if it had more to do with my artificial parts.
It was true I didn’t look fully human at times, but I only wore my tentacles or fins when working.
Even so, I didn’t have any friends. But Dr. Gail was at least someone to whom I related well. I trusted her; if something was disturbing her, I felt I needed to be wary.
“Of course, Dr. Gail.” I moved to the empty seat beside her, inclining my head courteously to Captain Deering and the unknown man.
Fortunately, with my enhanced vision, recording ability, and CPU storage, I didn’t have to stare at him in order to capture enough data for a fairly complete analysis.
He was nondescript in a way I felt was cultivated.
Middle-aged, mid-brown hair receding from a lined forehead, sharp brown eyes behind glasses, which were, in an age of both biological and mechanical correction, an affectation.
Of only average height, he was dressed in a gray suit that was unadorned and not a uniform.
He seemed almost designed to fade into the background unnoticed, which, for a construct such as I, made him perversely noteworthy.
Were it not for his respiration, heartbeat, and body temperature, I would have thought him one of the purely mechanical but humanoid robots designed for basic applications in civil service positions.
As I took my seat, I noticed Captain Deering was fidgeting with a pen, which was not a normal action for her as she was usually very calm. My bad feeling about the situation increased; whatever was to come, it probably wasn’t going to be good.
“So, shall we begin?” Dr. Gail asked with a forced lightness in her tone. I had never before detected stress like this coming from her. “Corbin, this is Mr. Mercer. He is… well, it’s complicated, but he has authority over this mission.”