Chapter 17 #2
“Don’t touch anything,” he warned Jesi, extending his arm so that she was completely hidden behind him.
“Back away towards the door. Slowly. Don’t make any noise.
” He sensed the girl move away from him.
Jesi’s faint footsteps echoed on the ground in bursts of light as she retreated.
The ship’s pulse rose. It swelled and quickened, until it reached a monstrous crescendo. They were out of time.
Before Iris could yell for Jesi to run, the door to the corridor slammed shut with a force that sent pieces of moss and shrubs hurtling towards them. The sound of the impact nearly would have ruptured Iris’s eardrums if not for his palms pressed tight against his ears.
Along the tree’s gargantuan trunk, the fungi flickered in a frenzy, their luminosity growing with each passing moment.
Iris marched over to where Jesi had fallen and grabbed her shaking hand.
“Give me your thumb, now.” Iris grabbed the pulsar blade and pressed Jesi’s thumb roughly into the indentation.
Add her fingerprint and her stress response to the authorised list, Iris commanded VIFAI.
When it began to protest, he cut it off: Now.
In a moment, the scan was complete, and Iris stored the pulsar blade away once more.
He leaned down and whispered into Jesi’s ear, calmly, patiently; she would need to remember his words exactly if they were to have even the slightest chance of making it out alive.
His eyes again fell across the mountain of bones, and Iris prayed for Yan and Ishtan to lose their way in the vents and avoid this killing field.
He forced his fingers into the ground beneath him.
The soil gave way. It was well packed, but soft.
He could move well on soil like this. Stay on high alert, he told VIFAI and got to his feet.
It was a shot in the dark, but it was the only way to prove himself right.
It was probably the only way any of them were leaving this ship alive.
“You have us here, trapped, willing to listen,” Iris called out, his voice cracking. “What is it that you want?”
No answer.
Jesi looked up at him like he was insane, and to her, he surely was.
For a moment, a cold chill crept up Iris’s back, and he envisioned Ishtan and Yan, already absorbed into the ship, both dead, necks snapped clean.
What would he do if the Nicaea spoke to him in Yan’s voice?
Would he uphold his promise and protect Jesi, or would he simply surrender to his fate?
“What is it that you want?” It was better to yell into the abyss than to drown in one’s thoughts.
The speakers above him crackled, and Iris instinctively bent his knees, ready to flee or fight.
VESSEL IRIS, a voice—if one could call it that, a culmination of Eli, Ordan, Riyu, and Tev—said. It was discordant and triggered some part of Iris’s brain that made it hard not to dry heave onto the ground.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.” Jesi muttered the words like a half-forgotten prayer. Her eyes darted back and forth across the vast room, failing to locate the speaker.
VESSEL IRIS, the voice repeated. It shifted towards Riyu’s tone and softened its edges, like it had picked up on Iris’s discomfort.
“Yes?” Iris didn’t know where to look, so he looked straight ahead at the tree.
WE CAN FINALLY SPEAK TO ONE ANOTHER. WE CAN FORGO THE GUESSING AND MISUNDERSTANDING.
Iris was taken aback by the eloquence of the speech.
It was like he was speaking to a completely different construct than the one that had simply recited Ordan’s and Riyu’s words.
While that voice had been robotic and flat, this, this was almost too human-like.
“If you could tell me where you are, I could face you,” Iris said.
There were ulterior motives for knowing where the ship was speaking from, but he would refrain from disclosing those just yet.
The ship laughed. At least, Iris thought it laughed. It was strange to hear the inorganic tone pitch in such a way. He had only heard VIFAI do that, but it had been speaking in his own voice for decades. WOULD YOU NOT RATHER ASK WHERE YOU ARE IN RELATION TO ME?
He had known it, but it wasn’t until that moment that Iris truly understood that they were inside the thing that was the Nicaea.
They were walking down its corridors, same as the blood flowed through Iris’s own veins.
The ship was the whole organism, each panel, each shattered light bulb.
It was connected to every bit of itself at all times, every shrub, every deck, every piece of itself reaching out towards the edges, gathering information, processing data.
It knew itself completely, had complete mastery of every vine.
YOUR FRIENDS WILL BE HERE SOON, VESSEL IRIS, the ship said.
WE CAN ALL TALK TOGETHER. With that final word, a vent panel high above popped open and tumbled to the ground.
Ishtan’s head poked out, only to recoil as two vines lunged towards the opening and pulled both the archaeologist and Yan out.
Yan cursed and fought against the vines as they tightened around his shoulders. Ishtan just hung there.
“Put them down, please,” Iris said, careful so that his voice didn’t telegraph the violence that was brewing below the surface. He could be dangerous if he was pushed; the ship already knew this.
Once Yan’s feet hit the ground, he shrugged his restraints off and ran towards Jesi, who was still in a pile somewhere behind Iris. Ishtan simply crumpled onto the dirt. No one went to his side.
NOW WE CAN TALK, the ship said with the tone of an irate mother.
“Who’s that?” Yan muttered.
PLEASED TO MEET YOU, PROFESSOR FUKUI. YOU’RE SPEAKING TO THE NICAEA, THE SHIP IMPOSSIBLY INTERFACING WITH ORGANICS AS WE SPEAK.
“Fuck.” Yan’s fear, no matter how palpable, instantaneously gave way to professional curiosity and frustration with being wrong. Certainly, a rare occurrence for him. He grinned at Iris. “It appears you were right, Vessel.”
The left corner of Iris’s lips tugged upwards, rebelling against the gravity of the situation. “I take no joy in being right.”
BANTER AMONG FRIENDS, OH, HOW I’VE MISSED THIS.
“They’re not friends,” Jesi whimpered from the ground.
EXCUSE—
“If you wanted banter, you shouldn’t have killed our friends.
You killed them for nothing. You killed Tev, and you killed Riyu, and you killed those two security guards who were just doing their—” A sharp whip of a vine flashed quickly, and Jesi clutched the side of her face with both hands.
Blood ran down the side of her neck. She stared ahead through the pile of bones, through the tree trunk, to the ghost of the Nicaea, which clearly did not appreciate being spoken to in such a tone.
BETTER. There was smug self-satisfaction in the electronic voice.
“Why did you kill them?” Iris asked. It was not a conversation he wanted to have in front of Jesi, but he had the sense that all conversations would now be held in the open, with the omnipresent Nicaea presiding over them. Luckily, Iris didn’t foresee this arrangement lasting too long.
The speaker crackled, as if someone was searching for the right words to respond with. Would the Nicaea search? She had absorbed their language at lightning speed, rivaling modern AI. She had even absorbed humour.
AT FIRST, I WAS AFRAID, I WAS PETRIFIED.
The Nicaea paused and searched some more.
Softly, the speaker crackled again, like the ship was laughing to itself.
I HAD BEEN ASLEEP FOR FAR TOO LONG, VESSEL.
WHEN YOUR FRIENDS OVERRODE THE AIRLOCK, IT JOLTED ME AWAKE, AND SUDDENLY, THERE WERE STRANGERS IN ME, STRANGERS THAT WERE GOING PLACES THEY SHOULDN’T, TRYING TO PRY ME OPEN.
It took a longer pause, nearly twenty seconds.
I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND YOU. I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU.
BUT YOU HAVE GIVEN ME LANGUAGE AGAIN. YOUR FRIEND TEV HAS GIVEN ME THE WAY TO LEARN LANGUAGE.
“You keep him out of this,” Jesi muttered, still nursing the bloodied side of her face.
NOW WE CAN COMMUNICATE, the ship continued, ignoring Jesi. IS THIS NOT BETTER? WE CAN RECONCILE OUR DIFFERENCES. ALTHOUGH, I HAVE TO SAY, VESSEL, PEOPLE HAVEN’T CHANGED MUCH IN THE PAST THOUSAND YEARS. I AM DISAPPOINTED.
Iris scanned the room as the Nicaea spoke, searching for a computer that may be the source of the voice. If only he could ask Yan. “This doesn’t explain why you had to kill our companions.” He had to keep the ship talking for as long as he could. Crumbs of a deadly plan began to settle in his mind.
DEFENCE, the Nicaea said. FIRST DEFENCE, AND THEN I LEARNED SO MUCH FROM ORDAN ALONE, SO VERY MUCH. I LEARNED EVEN MORE FROM DR. RIYU ALO. I LEARNED AND I LEARNED, AND NOW I KNOW WHAT I HAVE TO DO.
Jesi could now unlock his pulsar blade, but it wouldn’t be enough. Not yet. Iris needed to know where to strike. “And what is it that you have to do, Nicaea?”
I MUST KEEP LEARNING AND LEARNING AND LEARNING. YOUR UNIVERSAL FEED. I’LL JOIN IT.
Iris glanced back at Yan. A solemn flash of recognition crossed the engineer’s face.
Both he and Iris knew that if the Nicaea were to be released into the feed, there was no telling what damage she would do.
She was already developing far too fast. Learning, as she had put it, but she was not thrilled with what she was learning.
If Iris entertained the notion for a moment, he’d guess that the angry Nicaea would go for the Doshua Station AI first. While station AIs tended to be larger than VIFAI, they were also slower to respond.
The whole station was one organism, with the brain spread out thinly through every electrical circuit.
While VIFAI had one or two outside points of entry it could easily protect, a station AI could be penetrated from any outlet.