Rado Dyne, One Man's Burden
excerpt
One Man's Burden Vendor: Amazon.com Date: October 2, 2018 Length: 165 pages ISBN: 978-1726709330 |
The only doctor aboard an interstellar ship bound for Earth must attend to a victim of violent crime which took place in the cabin of an affluent passenger.
Humans long ago ventured out to other stars from Earth, but this night will bring into question why they did, and what peril awaits both humans and the things they thought they created to help them along the way.
Chapter 1: Medical Emergency
Joseph K. Goldstein was roused from the early stages of REM sleep by an incessant “bong” sound coming from the panel overhead. When he asked, “What is it?” the annoyingly cheerful computer voice said, “Medical emergency in Cabin 3.”
“Dispatch duty nurse,” Joseph replied.
“Duty nurse is occupied by resuscitation complications in revival section.”
“Dispatch an attendant,” he was growling now.
“This is a class two medical emergency, only personnel with formal-”
“I know, I know.” There was no dodging this. “What is the nature of the emergency?”
“Unspecified,” replied the ceiling panel.
“That's not possible, any class four or above requires more information.”
“Emergency class takes priority-”
“I thought that was only for class one, oh never mind...” Joseph was beginning to tug on pants. After brief consideration he said, “Can you tell me anything useful, so that I might, for example, take the right instruments with me?”
“Cabin 3 is unmonitored, no additional details can be provided.”
“Dare I say it, medical override?”
The panel paused for an impressive moment, then replied, “Privacy override not possible, status of monitors shows disabled.”
“What? Oh, never mind,” Joseph was tired of this conversation, so he pulled on a smock and rifled through several instruments, selecting those he thought most appropriate for going into an unknown, and unexpected, woke-me-up-in-the-middle-of-my-sleep-period, emergency. Then he requested the panels map him the fastest route up several levels to the cabins marked by single digit numbers.
Walking through the promenade Joseph noted that it was unusually wide for a corridor in the spin cylinder of the ship. I should spend more time up here, he thought to himself. Undoubtedly this deck also has the best exercise facilities too. Serving as crew aboard the Morning Star had allowed Joseph to travel. There was no way he could afford complete passage in hypothermic suspension, whiling away the years in transit without significant effects of aging. He would be allowed to enter suspension for the latter half of the trip, assuming a successful revival of the only other medical doctor on board, but that would not be for several years yet. This was a tragedy on its own, as he was not getting any younger. He couldn't really work on Elysium anymore, at least not in a way that would support his needs. The Interstellar Authority had a way of attracting those with the combination of valuable skill sets and... problematic histories. The I.A. was very forgiving of past indiscretions, and frankly they needed to be. Interstellar travel was mostly for carrying cargo that was, for some reason, valuable enough to warrant the insane cost of sending it through space. The few people who went along had to have some very strong motivation to move their entire existence to another planet, and enough money to survive the time it took.
Joseph finally reached Cabin 3, extended his hand to the touch-plate. As the door slid open, his eyes met the most horrific scene he had encountered in years. White walls were covered in blood, and a body was slumped over near the inner door. The arm had blocked the doorframe and the inner door had eventually given up trying to close. As he bent to examine the body a weak voice called out, “Help! Please!”
Joseph felt compelled to move down the corridor, there was obviously nothing to be done for this fellow. Just past the inner door was a head; a quick glance showed that it must have once belonged to the unfortunate fellow in the doorway. For a moment, an irrational part of his mind wondered if there had been some terrible accident with the door, but he quickly dismissed the thought. Such things were completely handled by safety protocols coded to zero-defect standards. As he rounded the curve, he came in sight of another terrible scene. Less blood, but there was someone slumped up against the wall, head tilted forward and unmoving. As instinct took over and Joseph knelt to check for any signs of life, he became aware of another presence down at the end of the corridor. Looking up, he saw a young child seated in an appropriately sized cushioned chair.
“Are you alright?” he began to ask, while realizing there was no breath coming from the man against the wall. “Good God, what happened here?”
“Please, I need your assistance,” said the boy in the chair.
Joseph rose, and walked toward the boy, being careful not to slip on the substantial pool of blood he now realized was on the floor.
“That's far enough,” said the child. When Joseph continued moving the boy said, “No, I'm serious, don't come any closer.” He was pointing some kind of shiny object at Joseph now.
“I'm only here to help. Are you injured?”
“Stand where you are, don't force me to harm you,” said the boy. “I know you don't have any idea what this is, but believe me when I tell you that it worked on him.”
Joseph halted his movement as he began to grasp the seriousness in the boy's voice. He raised his hands slightly.
“Now I'm going to invite you to come in, and sit down over there. I advise you to move very slowly, and don't get any closer to me. We need to talk about some things.” The boy rose and slid his chair backwards, all the while keeping the glinting object in his hand pointed at Joseph.
As he walked slowly towards the room, Joseph stated, “I'm a doctor, there was a medical emergency in Cabin 3, I have override privilege, and I need to bring more personnel here.”
The boy smiled, “Why don't you sit down there first, and let's have a chat. That was a nice try, but this room is private, and your override won't work. Plus, don't you think if the panel were to respond to you, it might be obvious to me and result in someone getting shot?”
Joseph was trying to remain calm. He was used to blood, and could handle scenes like this, but he was simultaneously annoyed that a child was giving him orders and a little frightened by the child's voice. It sounded like a child's voice, but there was something more to it. Finally, he reached the chair the boy had indicated and sat down, slowly. He only now thought to drop his medical kit gently on the floor next to him. The boy sat down in his chair as well, only meters away, facing Joseph, but always keeping the object pointed at the doctor.
“What is that?” Joseph gestured, “The thing in your hand.”
“This? This my friend is a 1911. A gun. A weapon from yesteryear. So named for the first year of its adoption by a military.”
“How is it you have it on a ship?”
“That is a long story. I'll tell you, but you're going to have to understand some important things first. It's obvious to you that you are stronger than me. I am well aware of that too. This gun is heavy, and I'm going to get tired if I have to keep it trained on you through our whole talk. In a few moments I'm going to rest it on my lap, but with my hand on it. Please don't make the mistake of thinking that you can cross the room to me and do anything to help your situation before I can stop you. As a doctor you can appreciate what that means,” with his head, he gestured towards the corpse in the hall.
“I can definitely appreciate-”
“Hold on,” interrupted the boy, “and don't interrupt me again, Son. What is absolutely critical to your survival at this moment is that you understand something about me. I may look like a child to you. I am physically a child, but I've been doing things like this for more years than you would guess, and I'm a surgeon with this thing,” he waggled the gun slightly. “I can move it from my lap to your chest, and drop a couple of dimes into you before you take your first step. So if you give me your word that you'll remain seated, I think we can both relax and have a man's conversation. What do you say?”
Joseph paused for a moment, then began, “Alright, I've never heard of a dime, but I think I get what you mean. I'm a bit nervous, but I'll agree not to get up from this seat until you release me. Somehow I believe what you're saying, though I'm not sure why.”
“Good, thank you,” the boy relaxed slightly and rested the gun on his leg, but with his hand still covering it. “I apologize for holding you at gunpoint, but under the circumstances I'm sure you'll agree it would have been difficult for me to get you to sit down and have this conversation without it.”
The doctor nodded, so the boy continued, “I'm sure this is not what you expected when the panel in your room woke you and instructed you to come here. What I said at the beginning is true; I do need your help to sort this mess out. I'm not strong enough to handle moving corpses on my own, and they can't be found in exactly this way, or ship's rules will force me into hibernation until we reach Earth. For reasons that will become apparent I can not afford to do that, so I need your help to arrange the corpse of this poor devil over here in a way that does not implicate me.”
Joseph only now realized that the dead man in the passageway had horns on his head. He had completely missed that as the adrenaline kicked in earlier. He now ventured to open his mouth, “So you want me to help you hide a murder and move a body, on a ship in interstellar space, with very strict rules about how mass may be recycled. Not to mention compromising all my medical ethics-”
“Come now Doctor, you have compromised your ethics before. I don't need you to dispose of the body, only change the circumstances in such a way that I can remain awake for the remainder of this trip.”
“How do you know anything about my past?” Joseph was becoming angry despite his compromised position in this situation.
“PROM told me. It's all right PROM. Might as well help me explain this. I think it's more likely he'll believe this if we double team it.”
“Very well,” said a calm and surprisingly mature voice from Joseph's left side. “If he doesn't, you'll just have to shoot him anyway.” Joseph glanced to his side, seeing a large, clear box with shifting lights inside of it. As he continued to look for the source of the voice, a single larger light on the box flashed in time with the speech. “Hello Joseph, or Joe, may I call you Joe? It seems that we're shortening everyone's name around here.”
“Indeed, that seems like a good idea to me,” stated the boy. “This is going to be an intimate conversation, so we should work on a familiar basis. You can call me Jon, short for Jon-Christopher. You'll get tired of using the full, hyphenated name after a while anyway.”
“Alright,” said Joseph. “You can call me Joe, if you like. But I don't understand, is this some kind of computer access-”
“I am hardly a computer,” interrupted the box named PROM.
“It's best not to insult him,” interjected Jon. “He'll find some way to take it out on you. PROM is, more correctly, an intelligence.”
“An intelligence... you mean...” Joseph was unsure how to continue.
“An intelligence,” Jon said, “like the planetary intelligences that operate on the major civilized worlds. Like Zeus on Earth. Or Athena on Delphi, though I'm not quite sure who managed that bungling of myth and terminology. Or Prometheus on Elysium.”
Jon stared at him, as if waiting for something to sink in. Joseph could imagine the box named PROM staring at him as well. “Is... PROM short for Prometheus?” he asked tentatively.
“There you go!” replied Jon, “Yes PROM is my shorthand name for Prometheus.”
“He thinks it's a rather good joke,” said PROM, “a joke based on some computer history that only he knows.”
“But that's impossible,” said Joseph. “Prometheus or any other planetary intelligence exists on millions of computer systems simultaneously. An artificial intelligence requires massive memory and processing power, spread out over the network of an entire planet!”
“We prefer just intelligence, you may capitalize it if you like,” PROM stated, for the first time with some emotion in the voice.
“As I said, it's best not to insult him,” continued Jon. “He is an intelligence in a box, if it helps you to think of him that way. He's not picky about gender either, you can refer to him as her interchangeably if you like. Just don't use the pejorative 'it'. He's very testy about that. Since you are not the man with the gun, I suggest you operate for the time being on the assumption that we have no reason to lie to you. Assume that PROM is an intelligence, albeit in a small container, and that he is the reason we already know everything about you, including how you lost your license on Elysium. Assume also that neither of us care about that. Much like the I.A. who manages star travel and this ship, we don't care about your past. PROM reviewed it and you are a competent medical doctor, who made a very human mistake, and paid a horrible price for it. Here and now, you are the medical examiner on this ship, and the highest ranking crew member who will review these two unfortunate deaths. My belief is that with a little creative editing, and some good old fashioned butcher work, you can help us pass this off as a double homicide.”
“I'm not sure how you expect me to do that, even if you force me under threat-”
“I don't plan to force you Doctor. That would be dangerous and tiresome for all of us. I plan to tell you why we are here, what we plan to do when we get to Earth, and let you decide to help us. I think, as a good patriotic human being, you will want to help us before the night is done.”
“You have me at a disadvantage,” said Joseph, “I'll be happy to listen to you, to both of you, but at some point someone is going to be coming through that door. I would prefer it if you don't feel you have to kill me then.”
“We have time Joe,” Jon assured him. “No one will come through that door. PROM will keep it locked, as these are our critical hours. This was my last meal of the day, traditionally the steward won't return until the next cycle to collect dishes. PROM is already altering the ship's systems to place the unfortunate steward in his own bunk, caught ill suddenly, and with an order for someone else to carry out his remaining duties for this shift. At some point our deception will no longer hold out, but that will be long past morning. By then I believe you will have agreed to help us, at which point you are the natural choice to take charge of this mess.”
“He can really do all that?”
“A trivial task,” replied PROM, “would you like me to arrange a promotion for you to ship's captain while I'm at it?”
“Accepting our premise that we are telling you the truth,” stated Jon, “PROM is basically a planetary intelligence that we can somehow cram into that box. The ship's computer is not an intelligence. It's just a basic computer, of limited faculties designed to make running a starship possible. PROM can encrypt and decrypt faster than any ship's computer. He overrode and invaded its memory when we first boarded, and can pretty much do anything he wants.”
“Actually, I did it long before we boarded,” PROM announced proudly. “We intelligences plan things on a scale you humans can't comprehend. Buwhahaha!”
“Yes, yes, PROM, 'your ship is but a mere plaything to me.' You'll have to forgive him; he's been a little different since we put him in that box.”
“No one put me in this box! I copied myself into this box. I designed this box. No human could have designed the fourth dimensional memory required to store my massive intellect in such a small space-”
“That's enough PROM,” interrupted Jon, “I know you live forever and are all powerful, etc., but the doctor and I have a few hours before the inevitable happens and we can't explain what happened here in a way that keeps me awake, and you from being recycled for-”
“They wouldn't dare! No one recycles me! They wouldn't would they? That would kill me, or this copy of me, and I like this copy of me!”
“Human time frames PROM, remember? Please let me finish explaining a few things to Joe. PROM is a copy of Prometheus. The original copy is still running things planetside on Elysium. To our knowledge, no one has ever done anything like this before. No intelligence has risked placing itself in a more vulnerable position than a planetary net. But PROM, very bravely, I might add, decided that he must place himself in this small box over here on the table. He may be a copy, but he self identifies now as something very separate from the original Prometheus on Elysium. If this ship was destroyed, or that box over there destroyed, PROM would, in a very real sense, die. I need him where I'm going, and he needs me. That's why I'm going to ask you to help us.”
“This is a lot for me to process,” Joseph admitted. “If I can believe you have an A.I.- sorry PROM, an intelligence- here in a small room on a ship, maybe I can understand why someone who looks like a child to me is holding me hostage. How old are you anyway? You look about seven or-”
“I'm eight, almost nine,” Jon replied, rather childishly, which was almost comforting.
“He's older than I am,” said PROM, “older than any creature we intelligences are aware of.”
Copyright © 2022 by Rado Dyne
