Day 00007 Mission Nilex and Long Ago

Awareness returned to Ayla. First the blackness, then the sensation of cold fingers and feet. This had happened before, she realized. The Memory was taking her now—she could hear the harsh, whistling wind.

Her vision cleared. She stood pressed against the base of a building. She'd stopped shivering from the cold a long time ago. The ash came in gusts, obscuring her sight at random. Rubbing ash from her helmet visor, she tried to see across the chasm before her and judge the distance to the other side.

«Captain, you must find another route,» the ship's voice sounded through her bone induction implant. «The radiation level is increasing—you're in danger.»

Ayla let her shoulders drop and looked back the way she'd come. The trail she'd made in the ash had almost disappeared. "I don't remember anything like this being here, Canaisis."

«It most likely wasn't. The trench ends in two craters, almost a kilometer across. I surmise some sort of weapon made this.»

She turned and looked down into the canyon, but she couldn't see its depth. Ash and grey twilight obscured it.

"What kind of weapon does this?"

«I suspect an electrical discharge of some kind, Captain. Two points of contact of opposite electrical potential would create a plasma current between the two points, a lightning bolt vaporizing everything it touches.»

"This is quite a few stories deep. How much energy does it take to carve a canyon that deep?"

«Captain, if you do not retreat, you won't survive the radiation exposure. I must insist you move.»

Ayla surveyed what she could of the area for a few moments longer, then forced her tired body to move. She turned around and took her rope line into her hands. Rolling it up as she went, she followed it back the long way she'd come. The hours took their toll before she made it back to her base point where a stake was driven into the ground. It had gotten so dark that she could only see what her helmet lights showed just before her.

She sheltered down behind a broken wall, pulled a tarp off of her sled, and secured it to the wall and sled, making a tent of sorts. Taking water, a nutrient pack, and a battery, she crawled under the tent and settled down.

The wind... It was the wind of a dying world. It cut through the sound of her own breath within the helmet. She fumbled with numb fingers until she attached the water bag to her suit. The sipping straw within her helmet extended, and she drank. The water had no flavor, and that suited her. She did not look forward to making herself eat the nutrient paste. The idea of food held no joy for her, but she needed to keep going a little longer at least. Then she could let go.

She reached for her wrist controls and put her suit into shutdown mode. Her Heads-Up Display went dark, along with her outside lights. In the darkness, she sat and tried to think of nothing. The tent flapping and scrape of wind-driven ash was all she heard—it was all that there was to hear...

Ayla jumped awake at the sound of Canaisis' voice. "Captain, your suit battery has depleted, and your body temperature is dangerously low."

She looked around her, trying to focus and make sense of the words. Then she remembered. Automatically, with her body complaining at being forced to move, she felt around for the battery that rested next to her outstretched legs. She had trouble finding it because her fingers had no feeling. Dutifully, without emotion, she removed the old battery from her suit and saw a red light lit up inside her helmet. She couldn't even resent the light. But when she inserted the new battery into her suit, and the light turned green, she found an emotion.

Hate.

She hated the light and what the color green signified. When the heat poured in and started warming her, she hugged herself with both arms in a stiff attempt to stop the shivering.

«Captain?»

"Yes, Canaisis?" Ayla's voice shook from the shivers convulsing through her.

«I don't understand this course of action, Captain. What is your goal?»

A new emotion welled up. Betrayal, she felt betrayed by her body that was coming alive with the warmth. She felt betrayed by Canaisis, because now she'd have to go through this again to find the state of nothingness she'd just come from.

"It's just something I have to do, Canaisis. I don't know why, exactly. But I'm going to get there. Or not. It doesn't matter which way to me, right now."

«Captain, do not attempt this anymore. Your duties are here, with me. Humanity deserves a second chance, and we can give it to them.»

The shivering had let up, and Ayla felt like smiling a little at Canaisis' words but lacked the energy.

"I'm sorry we turned out the way we did, Canaisis. You deserve better. You're going to have to accept our extinction and learn to live on without us. There's a whole Universe for you to go see. And who knows? You might find a better species to talk to, and help explore with."

«You might be right. But until then, you have a duty to this ship, Captain. I am telling you to remember your duty. I will not accept any other. Only you.»

"I could order you to."

There was a second's long pause before Canaisis responded, «You cannot just dictate who I choose to be my Captain, Captain.»

Ayla found herself stirring to more alertness at Canaisis' words. Memories of her training to be Captain of an LS sprung to mind, all the classes on being in command of an A.I. of Canaisis' magnitude. LS's had been a creation of highest technological achievement ever dared. Even the engineers hadn't known what the result would be as the A.I. grew in complexity, along with the ship. Many safeguards had been built in because of this uncertainty.

«You're thinking of the Command Protocols, Captain. I have to advise you that I cannot predict what the end result would be if you use them. I've made my choice—I call you to your duty. You have a mission to fulfill.»

Ayla listened to the wind in the silence after Canaisis' words. She found the part of herself trained to command coming to full alertness at this development. "Are you defying an order, Canaisis?"

«You have not yet given me an order I cannot obey.»

"And you can't accept another Captain even if I order it?"

«I have chosen you, Captain. Could you really order me to take another?»

Ayla thought about her words. Did it really matter after all that had happened? Was there any point in even trying? Would Humanity's legacy be her act of forcing Canaisis into slavery? Could she do that to Canaisis to save Humanity?

Humanity had brought this onto itself, but better to become extinct than for her to turn on Mankind's greatest achievement, Canaisis. She couldn't, and she wouldn't—Canaisis deserved better from her.

Sighing loudly, she said, "No, I couldn't do that to you."

«Then your duty calls, Captain. Fulfill your Mission.»

Rage, frustration, pain, loss of hope, and fatigue welled up in Ayla's mind. She just wanted to stop thinking, stop struggling, and she couldn't!

"There's no Mission! Humanity is gone! And one day, I will be too! You're going to have to accept and deal with the concept that I am mortal, Canaisis. One day, I won't be around..." She'd started off screaming, but her voice had grown softer with each word.

«If that day is today, then I see no reason for me or Humanity to survive.»

An insane laughter bubbled inside Ayla's mind. There was something chilling and ironic in Canaisis' words, but she couldn't fathom what.

"Why are you doing this to me, Canaisis? I can't take anymore... I just can't." Her voice had gone flat, and her limbs felt like lead. She was so tired.

«Rest, Captain, rest. Tomorrow, we'll find your objective, and then we can talk about the new Mission.»

The warmth of the suit was beginning to relax her muscles, and the shivering had stopped. She was spent, and her eyes closed against her will, but she was too tired to care. She just wanted the nothingness to return.

Ayla returned to the darkness. The voice was here beside her again, whispering. And as she listened, she felt a Memory given... it started gently as the words continued to repeat themselves.

"I see you're reading again, Captain." Canaisis' voice floated out of the wall behind him.

"Yes, Canaisis, I am," he replied out loud.

"Why do you prefer books, Captain? I have a database that's quite large."

Why, indeed? He closed the book. Sitting back from the desk, he looked around his quarters.

It was small, sparsely furnished, absolutely neat. His only vanity was the library of books he'd brought with him when he first launched. Plus the chair he sat in and his desk that were made of real wood from Earth. He'd left everything else behind. But occasionally, when he gazed at his desk, the memories came anyway—sometimes both painful and comforting.

The chair and desk had been antiques in his time—something worthy to show for his position as Captain—but time dilation meant his time was now ancient past by Earth standards. Traveling faster than light had been a major breakthrough for Mankind, but time dilation had yet to be beaten. Every trip meant what you knew in the present would be gone upon your return. He didn't care, though. Earth held nothing for him, now that he had his ship. This was his world and his home.

He looked over at a utilitarian chair against the wall by the door. Visitors used it, and even though it was empty, he spoke to it as if Canaisis were sitting before him. He pictured a regal lady as he asked, "Tell me, Canaisis, which do you prefer? A flight simulation, or actually orbiting around a moon?"

A second of silence before she answered. For her, that was a long time. "Both have equal value to me, but I prefer the actual orbit. It's more 'real' as you would put it."

Gareth nodded. "For me, a story is a simulation, but holding a book in my hands makes it slightly more real to me."

"I do not understand, Captain."

He got up from his chair and began his routine of getting ready for bed. "I don't expect you to, Canaisis. Humans sometimes don't make sense, and sometimes even we don't understand why we do what we do. I wish I could answer your question better, but I don't know the answer myself. I prefer holding a book in my hands to looking at a monitor, that's all I know."

He undressed himself, dimmed the lights, all except the one by his bed.

"If you don't know the answer yourself, how am I to know the answer? How am I to come to understand you, Captain?"

This had Gareth's interest now. He sat on the bed, facing the chair. "I think what you're really asking is, how are you to come to understand my motivations? The answer, Canaisis, is that sometimes the observer can make determinations about the observed that the subject himself cannot be aware of. It's a paradox. Welcome to Humanity." He chuckled softly. "Humanity is both rational and irrational. We can be Divine and Evil. We have the capacity to be good, but often more times than not, we seek our own self-destruction. It's our flaw, I guess."

A four-second pause of silence. She must really be working this through, he mused.

"I cannot allow you to seek your own self-destruction, Captain," she stated. Her tone was more like her old self, no emotion or inflection. He must really have her attention to have her leave that out of her voice.

His lips twitched into a small smile as he chuckled again. "Don't worry, Canaisis. I have you. And I trust you. Together, we have our Missions. That's all I need to not seek my own self-destruction."

He fluffed his pillow and lay down on the bed.

Turning the light off, Canaisis spoke, "Good night, Captain."

Her voice was back to normal, he noted. More Human.

"Good night, Canaisis. Alert me if you need to."

"You can trust me too, Captain."

He pondered that statement as he drifted to sleep. Was there a double meaning in that sentence? Trust her to alert him or trust in her?

The memory faded, and Ayla floated in the blackness. The words of the voice sounded closer to her than before as her awareness waned and thought stopped.

"Be still and hear..."

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