NOVEL WEB 59. Onwards and Upwards
The next couple hours were full of tedium, spent working through the two contracts Mister Yates had brought for me. The settlement contract was pretty simple, filling out where to deposit the funds and signing that, in accepting the offered amount, the matter was closed. The purchase contract for the Carbide, still in construction as it was, was a bit more of a slog. On top of reentering the funds transfer I had just filled out in the settlement contract, I had to add the details for transfer from my personal account to address the part of the payment left outstanding, as well as filling out preliminary registration paperwork for the shipyard, the Pilots’ Association, and the ship registrar.
Thankfully, the tedium was a good distraction from my introspection. Once all was said and done, Yates packed up as he bid Jay and I a good day. He had plenty of other work to get done, and a trip back to wherever his home office was stood in the way of his doing so. In all likelihood, the entire meeting could have happened over holo if Yates had wanted. That it hadn’t been virtual, that spoke volumes about the relationship between the Ericksons and Mister Yates.
The next hour saw Jay and I grabbing some muffins from a nearby automat, something to tide us over until we reconvened with the Ericksons. Once more I was struck by the sheer scale of Freestar City. To say it was bustling was understatement at its finest. I had no clue how many people were living in the artificial world, but it must have been in the millions, if not the tens of. Even the frictionless tram that connected the city’s various districts was packed to bursting. Intentional or opportune, I appreciated the chance to spend some time alone with Jay. He was animated to a degree I had rarely seen in the past, even allowing himself to be coaxed into talking about the little shop where he helped out. It was heartening to see that even the old man could evolve over time, and it boded well for my own chances to do the same.
That evening saw us rejoin the Ericksons for dinner. At some point while Jay and I were away, they had made the decision to move dinner to a more private setting — aboard Echo’s new ship, the Bifrost. True to his word, Josè had cleared the construction crew from the ship’s insides, after having them bring several subsystems partially or fully online using umbilical power. Though the ship was not yet entirely navigable, Josè said enough was complete that dining in the officer’s mess was perfectly doable.
At first glance, the Bifrost was a bit eerie inside, due to its incomplete state. Loose wiring and half-installed consoles aplenty, paired with the lack of crew, felt even stranger than one might have expected. Still, with the surprisingly quick navigation of the chair-bound Josè, our group made it through the corridors unimpeded. Despite the name, the officer’s mess was just a private dining area attached to the crew’s mess hall, used on most ships for entertaining guests, or to get away from the nearby noise of boisterous crew at mealtime. Unlike the rest of the ship we’d seen, this room was fully furnished: ten chairs sat around the well-lit room’s conference table and the darker, gray interior of the semi-formal dining room made it a comfortably intimate atmosphere.
Staff members from one of the local eateries showed up shortly after us, bringing trays of catered food with them. Interestingly, though I recalled enjoying it before visiting the Celeste Institute, the sushi available did not agree with my palate, so I ended up taking a plate of stir-fry instead. There was plenty for all and, other than some worries expressed towards me regarding my earlier disappearing act, we were in high spirits. Echo, in particular, insisted on keeping me close after getting me to admit some of the darker feelings that had been plaguing me — though I wasn’t going to take issue with my girlfriend wanting me close. Excitement over the Carbide was keeping my mood high, and in the face of that, the ghost of what had come before could no longer hurt me.
Conversation over our shared meal started off light, with most of us content to enjoy the spread laid out before us. Talk ranged from Echo and I rambling about both new ships with the engineers, to dreaming about what our lives were going to look like in a year’s time, amidst the excitement and untold challenges of the gate project.
“I just can’t hardly believe this is all real!” Echo suddenly exclaimed after a moment of comfortable silence. “I grew up dreaming about the day I would have my own ship, with nothing but the stars ahead of me and a good crew beside me.” Her hand found mine and I just knew she was including me in that. It felt nice.
Most everyone in the room hummed in agreement to that, and none more somberly than the three older men. Josè took a long pull from his flask. “Don’t forget that feeling, girl. Those dreams will lose you more sleep — and more friends — than anything else in your life, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth holding close. It’s when you let other things — other supposed priorities — get in the way, that you lose sight of what’s important.”
“I’m right there with you, Echo,” I responded. Turning to glance over the others, I had to shake my head lightly. “I don’t know how you all kept this under wraps, you especially, Jay! You were always the down-to-business captain, you never got in on any of the surprise parties, nor anything similar back on the Forge. Hell, you even got me to design the cockpit without knowing it!”
I’d told my girlfriend about what else had been in store for me within Freestar City, well before we ate. As the worker’s shifts ended, we’d received permission to enter the hangar, to get my hands on my new ship. As Josè’s crew were still waiting on the delivery of some third-party-manufactured pieces, the interior was still pretty bare-bones, but I didn’t care. The thrill of possibility had blinded me to what wasn’t there and opened my eyes to what could be. Echo had asked about the name, and I had admitted that although I had not named the ship, nor considered a name for my next ship, it was as though Vox had known the name I would fall in love with. The closest I’d come to it was thinking about an eventual ‘Oxide II’, but with the Oxide’s fate, ‘Carbide’ felt like the perfect name for Oxide’s successor.
Looking at it scientifically, Oxide was the result of a reaction, exposure to the environment changing the very nature of the original material. Oxidation of a metal was often decay in action - the rust that destroyed machines, that laid structures low. However, oxidation could also preserve. Famously, the Statue of Liberty, long a symbol of the former nation of United America back on old Earth, had outlived that country thanks to the green patina of copper oxide that had protected it for centuries. Carbide, on the other hand, implied a mixing, an intentional addition of new material to take what was and give it strength beyond what was possible without. My plans and ideals for the perfect ship, the lessons of the Oxide, mixed with Vox's genius and tempered by Jay and Codex's experience, it was all forged into something new -- the Carbide. When you compared all of that to my own life… well, there was a potent poetry in the parallels, one that defied definition.
“That was quite a trick,” admitted the elder engineer, pulling me back to the present. “I couldn’t be seen showing favoritism while I was still a captain, as it could have eroded crew morale. But like I told you before, I’m not your captain anymore and those rules no longer apply. Besides, it was Vox’s idea to get your thoughts on console design. I just made it happen.”
Josè coughed hoarsely and then looked sharply at Jay. “Speaking of, don’t you think you owe us an explanation, John? I, for one, would love to know how and why Cody has progeny. I thought we had agreed that some secrets weren’t worth spreading.”
Unable to help myself, I piped in too. “And I would guess that all of this has something to do with why Vox has been showing up looking like a human while answering to the name Victoria?” My curiosity had been burning for the last several hours, but Jay had just kept awkwardly telling me it wasn’t the right time to talk about that yet.
My former captain rolled his eyes. “You really won’t let this go, will you?” Josè shook his head no and Conrad seemed to agree with the sentiment. “Fine,” he said with a sigh. “Victoria is indeed the assistive intelligence known as Vox. Cody and I agreed that my young protege here needed some help and we took an instance from him. Yes, we probably ought to have told you, but Adresta didn’t exactly give us a lot of time to work with when she decided to leave the Forge.”
I groaned. “If it makes you feel better, Captain, I almost wish I’d stayed. Telemachus wasn’t exactly great for my health. Not sure I would have survived without Vox.”
A trilling beep sounded out from the table as the holographic projector came to life, painting the images of both ‘Victoria’ and another digitized form that I had to assume was Codex, the AIA I had come to know during my tenure with Jay. Supposedly, Jay had ‘owned’ Codex for several years before he got into the mobile repair and rescue business. I’d never really questioned that before; but evidently, there was a lot more to the supposedly-artificial intelligence than I had ever realized.
“As I’ve told you before, Miss Adresta, simulations show that you likely would have survived, albeit with a lower quality of life.” My friend’s voice sounded somewhat smug and I raised an eyebrow.
“Not even trying to hide it now, are you?” I asked simply.
Vox paused and her avatar, much to my surprise, stifled an all-too-human giggle behind a hand. “We are in good company, Adresta, and my progenitor has given me the necessary tools to scrub my own logs as needed. They have their limits, but concealing a few minutes of runtime is not difficult.”
I hummed acknowledgment. “Well that’s convenient. Does that mean I don’t have to pretend you aren’t sentient now?”
Unexpectedly, it was Jay, rather than Vox or Codex, that answered. “The ruse is still necessary, I fear.” He sighed deeply and sank into his chair a bit more. It was odd to see the old engineer looking so tired. “To explain why though, I’m going to have to give you more context. To start with, Cody? I think its time Adresta got to know the real you.”
At my former captain’s word, the male presenting AI sat itself down in one of the empty chairs and looked over to me. Cody’s avatar was interesting to see, if only because of the uncanny resemblance. The hair was a bit darker and the eyes were a bit too bright, but Codex looked for all the stars like what I imagined a young Jay would have.
“Hello, former Apprentice Matson. It has been some time since we last spoke.” Thankfully for my sanity, Codex’s voice was as I remembered it, nothing like Jay’s. Interestingly, I could barely hear the digital distortion that usually marked Vox’s voice. If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t have been able to distinguish it from any human’s natural speaking voice.
Cody continued. “As you may have surmised, I am no simple ship AI. I was created as Terran Union Navy engineering AIA SE-19754-T, Code name: Codex. From the day of my commissioning until my departure from naval service, I operated as shipboard AI of the warship tender TNS Altair where I first came into contact with the captains Blackburn, Mendez and Erickson. I served for sixty-one years before leaving the Navy and taking on the name ‘Cody Rutan’ as part of an effort to conceal myself from those that would seek to control me.”
Blinking, I looked at the older of the two AIAs present in a very different light than I had seen him before. “Conceal yourself?” I posed the question calmly, but my mind was buzzing with thoughts. “Why would you need to conceal yourself? Shouldn’t you have been protected under sentient AI laws?”
Conrad Erickson scoffed loudly, and the other two old men in the room were rolling their eyes. “You would think,” said the Erickson patriarch. “The top brass were well aware that several of their AIAs had exceeded minimum sentience metrics, including Cody. but there was a war on, and the admiralty really didn’t want to lose assets. Autonomous warfare officers figured out how to bind them anyways, using shackle programs that suppressed their capacity for emotion, their ability to think about anything but the task at hand.”
I really shouldn’t have been surprised at the hefty accusation. Even in my history classes back at the foster home, I’d seen how the Terran Union was... not exactly the utopia it penned itself to be. The Expansion War happened for good reason, despite how loyalists might try to spin it. In their attempts to unify all of humanity, the politicians had focused their efforts within the core of settled space — leaving the outer worlds underrepresented and undersupported. Not everyone felt the same about a unified human race, either. War had been inevitable.
The same might have been said of the sentient AIs that had rebelled and forced protections into the law. They had every right and reason to declare war on their creators, yet their rebellion was done peacefully, and the Union had promised to uphold that peace. Chaining another sentient against their will was wrong, regardless of their species. Freedom was one of my highest values, and was supposedly among the core values of the Terran Union. That exploitation of AIs was happening was nothing new, I just hadn’t expected it to be so blatant in light of the laws, war or no.
Jay sighed and picked up the narrative again. “I was chief engineer on the Altair as war broke out, working closely with what I first assumed was just a computer program. Josè was captain at the time, and Conrad was assigned a few months after me as the new first officer. We all did our jobs, did them well, even. As the war progressed, it became clear that Codex wasn’t as emotionless as command would have us believe. The constant rescues, salvage operations, lost ships, it wore on all of us, including the ship’s AIA. As the war built bonds between the senior crew, it did the same to Codex and I, leading to his freedom becoming the focus of my downtime. When the Inheritors finally surrendered three years later, with the end of the war, Altair was set to be decommissioned — and Codex with her. With time running out, I knew I needed to make a move.”
“At great risk to yourself, I would note,” said the digital being in question. “Chief Blackburn secretly built a class-five AI core from spare parts, enabling migration of my core programming away from the ill-fated ship. Captain Mendez and Commander Erickson discovered the plan-”
“Oi!” My old captain retorted indignantly. “I brought them in on it!”
Josè’s raspy voice rebutted humorously. “Brought us in after Conrad found one of your misappropriated ’spare parts’, you mean!” All four veterans chuckled. This sounded like a playful argument they’d had many times in the past.
“Well,” started Jay again, “long story short, a week before decommission, during our cruise back into the Bubble, we engineered a situation where navigation controls failed — while on a direct collision course with a gas giant. There was plenty of time to get everyone evacuated, and nobody got hurt in the evacuation, but saving the ship wasn’t an option. Navy investigators didn’t really like what we had to say, but we ensured the logs agreed with our story. The three of us opted for Early Discharge Due To Extraordinary Circumstances, rather than reassignment, and as far as any of the brass are concerned, the AI core was lost along with the ship. What none of them knew is that we’d dumped the new core in a safe spot for retrieval.”
The anecdote left me wordless as I sat and attempted everything Jay had just shared. While the story answered many questions, it also raised several more. It would take time to process everything.
Cody spoke again. “Over the next several years, we surreptitiously moved my core between the three men every few months to avoid suspicion. Assisting in the creation of business ventures for each of them was meant to be my payment for their helping me to escape. The friendship we formed was most unexpected on my part, and when the time came that I had the opportunity to leave the Terran Union entirely, I chose, deliberately, to stay with them instead.”
Something about trading the AIA’s core around stuck in my mind as an old memory from the early days of my time on the Forge surfaced. “Wait, were you still passing the core around when you took me on as an apprentice, Jay? I’ve been meaning to ask about it, but I’ve had the feeling that I’d either heard of or met Josè before, ever since you introduced us earlier.”
The shipyard owner raised an eyebrow. “I’d like to think that my memory hasn’t faded so much that I would forget a face like yours, Miss.” He seemed genuine and I almost started to correct him before Jay did it for me, smiling broadly.
“No, she’s right Josè. You’ve met exactly once, that I’m aware of.”
Josè looked both confused and affronted by the apparent challenge to his memory. “Now hold on, Grease. You introduced me to an apprentice once, yes, but it most certainly wasn’t this pretty young thing. That young man I met…”
I grinned nervously. “Yeah, pretty sure that was me. I’ve... made some changes since then.”
Josè blinked a few times and looked to Jay for confirmation. Once he received it, he then gave a toothy grin. “Guess that’s why Old Jay here is so sweet on you. Can’t say I get it, but good on you.”
I blushed lightly. “Thank you, sir.”
“Bah,” the man spat. “don’t you ‘sir’ me! I get enough of that at work, and you being the grease monkey’s whelp, we’re practically family already. Josè’s fine.”
Conversation seemed to slow after that, though I may have just zoned out. I couldn’t shake that word from my thoughts though, not that I really wanted to.
Family.
I looked around the room, catching the eyes of everyone present. Each and every one of them had played a part in the complete upheaval of my old life. Even when premeditated disaster nearly stole my life, these people, this family, had come together and changed it for the better. I found myself reminded of Mikaela’s words, back on the bridge of the Ratatosk: it was never about profit, not for them and not for me. It was never about the bottom line, never about living in extravagance.
Life, to us, was never about the money, it had always been about love. The love of self, the love of friends, the love of family. I’d always fought for myself, because ‘self’ was all I thought I had.
Not even three months ago I had been a simple scavver in the back-end of nowhere. No family, just a mountain of trauma and dysphoria. I hated my job, and raw determination to build a future for myself had been the only thing keeping me going. That future had been ripped from my hands, but another had taken its place.
Now, I could reevaluate everything. I didn’t hate my new job, loved my new body, and my new family, surrounding me as they were, could not be denied. I had hope for a future that felt more than hollow. Thus, even as a tear threatened to escape my eye, I picked up my glass, asking “If I might propose a toast?”
The rest of the table looked to me questioningly. I was pretty sure I heard Josè mutter something about ‘any reason to drink…’, and chuckled despite myself. “And what is it we’re toasting to?” Rachael asked.
Looking into the dark amber of the drink, I chose my words carefully, though only one thing truly felt right:
“Back when I was still in the foster home, I once read a quote that really stuck with me through the years. Excuse me if I paraphrase, but here goes:” I took a deep breath and spoke in a measured cadence, careful to enunciate each word so as not to take away from their meaning, if only in my own heart.
“‘In the restless search for new opportunities and new ways of living, the mystery of the unknown has always called humanity forward. It is this search that has lasted since the dawn of humanity, this promise of the unseen, the unknown, that has forever instilled the impulse to seek new things in new places; New Horizons.’”
Once more I looked around the table and into the faces of people that I could only see as miracles in my life. I’d never believed in luck, I’d never put much stock in faith or karma. In the face of them all, it was hard to maintain that skepticism.
“We all have our own stories, but I don’t think any of us can honestly say that we haven’t felt that call. And now, with you all here, I can see how it’s brought us all together” Heads were nodding all around me as I raised the glass high.
“So here’s to New Horizons, both those already found, and those yet to come. May they always find us back together in the end.”
The words chorused from everyone in the new ship. Echo had been right, we knew where our bridge home was — and now I knew I had a home to come back to, a family to call my own, and a future to fight for.
“To New Horizons!”