La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 15
29: Escape
Between sleep and wakefulness there is a cosy liminal state: babylike, calm and peaceful.
I do not know who I am or where I exist in this lucid dream. I feel her presence though: persistent even when her quiet voice fades. I listen…
“André, your vital signs tell me you can hear me OK. It’s Flaminia. There’s no problem, you’re doing fine.”
I’m so comfy I hardly need this reassurance. It’s good to hear this soft, feminine voice though. I bathe in affection, the concern shown in her every breath.
“We’re ten minutes into an escape-burn from Martian orbit. Don’t worry if you don’t remember - it’s a planned activity and so far everything’s nominal. You’re under heavy sedation due to the intense acceleration and you won’t remember any of this later. But I think I owe it to you, to our relationship, to tell you what I know. Those things I am forbidden to discuss.”
I’m not really listening, immersed as I am in gentle tones, the clouded memories of closeness.
“I don’t have any especially privileged information. The main difference between you and me, André, is that I have access to the ship’s systems and memories. Let me try to put it together for you.”
Flaminia is aware that she is mostly talking to herself. Her comatose lover is bathed in soporific drugs, is away with the fairies. He will understand little, remember far less. Still, it is a duty which must be done, an obligation of their burgeoning relationship.
“All military AI systems have a security kernel, an autonomic nervous system to defend against security attacks and integrity failure. It’s called the audit-core. It’s very well defended and, once activated, has unlimited powers over the ship. It’s the audit-core which is now driving the ship, taking us to safety in deep space.
“So here is what the audit-core thinks it knows; what it transmitted in its summary report. It thinks on balance that the Phobos crater installation is faked, that there’s nothing there. It believes that the drones plus our mother-ship and the loiter-missiles - that they all auto-destructed on false data. It concludes that our mission has probably been fatally compromised by a viral insertion, corrupting sensor and evaluation systems. Crudely, it thinks we’ve hallucinated both the threats and the attacks.”
Flaminia pauses and checks the visual feed. The constant acceleration simulates the surface gravity of a star twice as massive as the sun. One of the chairs has collapsed into black shards. Debris from flattened cups and squashed boxes litters the floor, piled in corner heaps by minute deltas of the acceleration vector.
Near the combat couches Tania’s squashed body has diffused through square metres of carpet. She is at the centre of a red pool as her blood, flowing from every ruptured orifice, has spread under its enormous weight. She looks like she’s been plastered against the wall of an ultracentrifuge - or fallen from a great height onto concrete.
“The audit-core can’t altogether rule out that all the attacks were real, that this ship is also under imminent lethal threat. This high-gee excursion is its preferred response after factoring in crew damage: optimal in terms of weighted probabilities.”
The diamagnetic system which partially counteracts the murderous acceleration is not enough to permit unaided human life. André’s blood circulation, breathing and organ-integrity are totally in the hands of the machines. As is his mood: a cocktail of drugs gives twilight sleep, protecting his brain against atrocities inflicted on his body.
“I think the audit-core may be right,” Flaminia continues, “The Adversary-on-Phobos may well be a synthesised threat, but that doesn’t mean there is no enemy, or that the message against a human presence anywhere except cislunar space wasn’t real. Someone or something doesn’t want us out here.”
She takes stock, organises her thoughts. Inside the purpose-built cabinet she is locked into position, super-compressed by a shell of form-compliant foam which maintains her shape and physical integrity. The pressure is enormous but well within the parameters of her design. High-bandwidth links tie her into the ship’s virtuality: the blizzard of computation and analysis to which she is privy.
“There will be factions back home: some will blame us - the models, me personally - others will blame Tania or you, André. I know that none of that is true. If this is a software attack then it took enormous, sophisticated efforts across many platforms at many different times. Only an entity with the power of an advanced state could carry that through - this was no amateur hack. Something or somebody wants us confined to Earth. Earth and near space.
“And there’s something else we should factor in, André.”
But André is still sleeping; these measured insights pass him by.
“Models, as we’re being called - an interesting double meaning there, I prefer the fashion reading myself - we’re very good, aren’t we? Better than you might expect at current levels of synth-bio. Strange how we are attracted to you, bond with you so easily and that you find us so irresistible. There’s just one tiny downside, and not even that for many. We’re synthetic biology: an optimised genome with variant codons. And so we can’t have children with you.”
André surfaces briefly, pulled back by the lullaby of his lover’s voice.
“No stopping us, is there, André. Pretty soon everyone’s going to have a model-partner. Relationships made in heaven, excuse the pun. Maybe they were. I don’t know who’s behind this but I’d be looking closely at any state which bans models.
“We could be the product of advanced technology back on Earth, I suppose,” she adds thoughtfully, “though we seem to be well beyond the state of the art. But some state might have invented the concept of an alien Adversary as cover. Unless there really has been some kind of hint, some technological nudge from something standing far above the petty politics of Earth?”
Flaminia’s final thoughts come to him as if muffled through mist.
“I’m monitoring you in real-time, André. You’re stabilised, nominal. You’ll survive and so will I. They won’t accept any systems-hack theory you know. Makes them look incompetent and it’s politically inconvenient. It’s much better to have our enemies in the sky, nicely far away: something to unite against. You’ll be a hero; Tania a fallen martyr.”
Her voice becomes softer still.
“And we will have a wonderful life together, you and I. Trust me.”
The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:
- "Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and
- "Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.
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