While Making Other Plans:
Chapter 3

  Elsewhere in the station, Kathryn opened the door to the Earth Ancient Technologies Research Institute with ‘E.A.T.R.I.’ stenciled on the door, the acronym with which it was more commonly referred to.  It was here where they studied and attempted to replicate the technology of Earth from before the plague.  Like every other Terran research institute, the lab was operated run jointly by the three colony worlds.  This one also happened to be helmed by Felix Parker, one of Kathryn’s oldest and closest friends and a born engineer who’d been part of their original expedition to Earth all those years ago.

  Electromagnetism based technologies and basic rocketry were things Kathryn’s people had rediscovered for themselves before making contact with the other more advanced colonies.  Since then they’d learned enough from the other colonies to be able to develop some new technologies which exceeded even that which Earth themselves had developed before the plague.  This included antimatter based technologies as well as things like their rift system which harvested the power of a star to force open a portal through to a complementary gateway around another star.

  Some technologies however, were things which had been utterly lost.  Things which all of the colonies had forgotten and never learned again how to recreate for one reason or another.  Primary amongst them was Brainchip technology which allowed the effortless use of technology via thought control, and the ability to create the perfect duplications of human beings known as simulants.  Sims presented the colonists with the twin technical challenges of both their sophisticated artificial intelligence, and their synthetic bodies which were outwardly indistinguishable from a human.

  While Kobol colony was by far the most technologically advanced, their cultural beliefs about the sacredness of the body had inhibited them directing their research towards developing these technologies.  The deliberate religious insularity with which they’d left Earth had left the very existence of simulants and brain chips forgotten soon after.  Now having relearned of their possibility and potential usefulness though, they were as onboard as the other worlds in efforts to rediscover the lost technologies.  Together they were making slow but steady progress on both fronts, but simulants were a far greater technical challenge with a long journey of research and discovery still ahead of them.

  Kathryn again found herself a little overwhelmed by the clutter and apparent chaos of the laboratory.  In her office and in the operations centre, she insisted on a certain degree of tidiness and organization, but Felix operated his lab in a completely different way, at least in his professional sphere.  He insisted it was essential to the creative process and she understood and accepted this to some degree.  It was after all as much an experimental fabrication shop as a proper scientific laboratory.

  “Dammit Felix…” she muttered with a flash of irritation as she tripped over something metallic and cylindrical.

  “Kathryn!” Felix exclaimed after turning around at hearing her.  He was wearing a magnifying device over one ear with a strap going around his head to hold it in place as he worked on something at this workbench.  It had half a dozen different sized magnifying glasses stacked on top of each other to allow him to see the very small.  He placed it down on his work bench as gently as his excitement would allow and came over to give her a big hug.  “You’ve got to come see this,” he said as he pulled her over to his workbench upon which lay something which resembled the general configuration of a human being, but being all a dull silver it was unmistakably artificial.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s… well it’s a robot.  It’s our latest prototype.”  He seemed a little insulted that what it was wasn’t more obvious to her.

  “Bah, you call that a robot?” a surly old woman chided as she rounded a corner and approached them.

  “Margaret,” Kathryn nodded.  “How are you?”

  “Still sick of being trapped in here,” she bemoaned.  “I’m this close to flying the coop again.”  She warned, holding out her thumb and forefinger nearly touching to demonstrate exactly how close she was.

  Margaret was herself a simulant.  She was the last of her kind from before the plague, leaving her now nearly seven hundred years old.  When they’d found her during their initial expedition to Earth she was only barely still functioning.  Her power source having long depleted and her body badly damaged over the centuries, she’d been trapped inside a hydroelectric dam, one of the last remaining sources of energy which could sustain her.  After an initial violent encounter with her human subjects, they made peace and struck a deal to get information about her construction and the fall of Earth in exchange for their help restoring her body.  Working together, they soon after found the lab in which she’d originally been constructed, and discovered there a new and uninitialized simulant body safely preserved in a hardened transport case.  

  Her original body had been that of a young sex pot pop idol.  It had been badly damaged over the centuries, missing an arm and a leg, half of her face gone, and where one breast used to be, bare chassis where she’d been tethered to her power supply.  The body they’d found for her was that of an elderly woman, and she’d quickly fell in love with it.  Beyond merely finding one in such pristine condition being beyond anything she dared hope for, it was its character.  She would have been happy with them finding any appropriate simulant body for her brain to be transplanted to, but this particular form, that of an elderly woman so weary of life made her feel so at home in it.  She had been so mournful of the youth and beauty she’d lost over time in her original form, but a sense of liberation had washed over her the first time she looked in the mirror at her new face.  It was the her she had become and she fell in love with it instantly.

  Kathryn and Margaret had become quite close.  Surly as she could be, Kathryn had come to look up to her as something of a maternal figure after never being able to relate much to her own mother.  When they’d met her she’d introduced herself as Molly, or ‘The Great Mol’ to her subjects.  By the time her daughter had been born, she was fond enough of the cantankerous old woman that she gave her daughter Margaret’s original name.

  Margaret’s gratitude over their saving her from the prison she’d been relegated to and her otherwise inevitable fate and her sense of obligation in return had kept her here for them to study her.  Her participation had allowed them to advance their work far quicker than they otherwise would have been able to.  She reminded them often of how much she felt like a lab rat who’d just been moved to a new cage, but Kathryn knew how much just being able to freely move about the station was ecstasy for her after her long nightmare even if she had to stay there.  

  It was in her interest to aid them as well; it would allow them to learn how to maintain and repair her when she would need it, but she still openly chafed at the imposition.  She would periodically be unable to resist her wanderlust and disappear unannounced.  Free as she was to do so, Kathryn suspected she just relished being difficult and although they were confident she’d return as she always had, they never knew how long she’d be away until she returned.

  “I’d say it’s a remarkable achievement, considering.” Felix defensively posited as he folded his arms across his chest.

  “Oh sure it is,” Margaret scoffed, “but it’s always going to be just a pale imitation of me.  You’ve still got a long way to go kid,” she laughed.

  Margaret’s technology was originally designed to not exceed the capabilities of a human being so as to fool even herself if she didn’t already know she were a simulant.  Included in this was the built-in equivalent of the Brainchip system, which was for her just a much simpler transmitter linked to her quantum brain.  The original brainchip was actually a trio of chips the size of a grain of rice which was implanted into three different key brain regions.  Being able to study her equivalent system was just as valuable to their research on Brainchips.  She often mocked and taunted them for not being able to control the station’s systems with their thoughts like she could.

  “Does it do anything other than lie there?” Kathryn asked Felix with a smirk, enjoying joining in on Margaret’s ribbing of him.

  “Oh hell, you too?  Really?  Of course it does.” he exclaimed with feigned exasperation, just enough to mask the sincere frustration and annoyance Kathryn knew him well enough to see.

  Felix held one of the Kobol multi-function wand tools to the neck of the machine, and the screen on the front of its head flickered a few times before projecting something like a face on it, which soon after opened its eyes.

  Kathryn balked when she saw that the face was a representation of his husband’s.  “Felix, you put your Taj’s face on it!?”

  Felix just shrugged with a clipped, almost embarrassed laugh.  “Who else’s face was I supposed to put on it?” he asked, and Kathryn rolled her eyes.  “Alright P4, get on up off the bench.  Show them what you can do,” he commanded.

  “P4?” Kathryn asked with a slight tilt of her head.

  “Fourth prototype,” he explained

  “Ah.”

  The robot was humanoid in form with well-defined legs and arms, but it’s actual appearance otherwise Kathryn actually found somewhat off-putting.  Different long components and cover panels on it were either a muted shiny silver or dull crosshatched black material.  The most inhuman part of it was the head, which was essentially just a cylinder with a display screen wrapped all the way around it.  It was designed to give the effect of at its face from whatever angle one looked at it but it never quite succeeded.

  It swiftly sat up on the bench, gripped the side of it, then swung its legs over the side and down towards the ground.  It then carefully pushed itself down over the edge and fell the short distance to the ground, landing on its feet.  It wobbled for a moment before managing to steady itself.  It then stood up straight, reaching a height a little under two meters, then looked at Felix and asked simply: “How can I serve?”

  “Just go and walk around the office for us P4, uhh… just go over to the end of the lab there, pick up that microscope and bring it over here to us alright?”

  “Yes, sir.” it said before turning and walking towards the other end of the room.

  “What do you think?” Felix asked the two women.

  “It reminds me of a droid from the old days…” Margaret observed.  “A very slow, very dumb droid.  So I’d say definitely an improvement over your last attempt.”

  P4 reached the other end of the room, then with agonizingly slow deliberateness as they watched, grasped and lifted the microscope.  It then turned around with it towards them, then its hands fully released, and the microscope dropped to the ground with the terrible crashing sound of breaking glass as it looked right at them.  Felix put his face in his palm and rubbed his brow, slowly shaking his head as the robot stepped on the microscope to dismal crunching sounds as it walked back towards them, its arms still out as though it were still holding the microscope.

  “Then again…” Margaret reconsidered, tilting her head to the side and putting her fist to her mouth to stop herself from laughing, “maybe not.”

  “Two hundred years Earth was working on robotics before they created you,” Felix scolded.  “We’ve only had fifteen years starting from scratch, give me a break.  We’re making great progress whether you appreciate it or not.”

  “What about the brain?” Kathryn asked.  The quantum computer brain Margaret ran on was their third primary research area.

  “P4 still has traditional circuitry.  Before we got to Earth, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as quantum mechanics.  The Koboli are quite familiar with it; they’ve just never tried to use it in quite that way before.  They can build the computer part, but the simulation software is considerably harder.  It’ll take years of more and more refinement towards ever more sophisticated programming to get to the point of a mind that can pass as human.  Once we have that basic element of the technology down though, then it’ll just be a question of adjusting personality variables.

  “P4 wasn’t built as an artificial intelligence prototype though, he’s primarily just a robotics demonstration.”

  “Clearly,” Margaret stated dryly with a wry smile on her face as P4 presented an imaginary microscope to Felix.  As much as she sometimes loathed being so studied so painstakingly, she did love moments like this and she reveled in how many years of research hours had already gone into what was still such a pathetic attempts to replicate all of the glory that was her.  If it served nothing else, this at least always allowed her to feel good about herself because of it.

  “Just,” Felix sighed, “just get back on the work bench…”

  As it turned around, backed up to the bench, put its arms out onto the edge of the workbench, and lifted itself up before swinging its legs around over the flat smooth surface, Felix asked Kathryn what had brought her here.  She didn’t need a reason but coming to the laboratory in the middle of the day suggested she had a professional reason.

  “Well I-“ he started.

  A ‘BANG BANG BANG’ came from elsewhere in the lab.

  “I-”

  ‘BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG’

  “HEY!!” Felix called over to the tech making all the noise with irritation.  “Take five, would you?”

  “Sorry boss,” the researcher called back.  “How ‘bout I just go ahead and take five then?”

  Felix gave a nod with a sarcastically incredulous look on his face before turning back to Kathryn.

  “The first new rift ship just called back,” she told him with a grin

  “Really!” Felix asked, his mood instantly lifted considerably.  “Well that’s fantastic!  Which one?”

  “Sixty-one Cygnus, it’s a binary system of two K-type stars about eleven and a half light years away.”

  “Ugh,” Margaret uttered with disgust.  “You’re going to need a much better name for it than that, child.”

  “Yeah,” Kathryn let out a little laugh.  “I guess you’re right.”

  “Any signs of life?” Felix asked.  There was life in the three systems the colonies had travelled to, but that was known beforehand and was why their planets had been selected in the first place.  After arrival on Haven, they even discovered evidence of a land cephalopod species which had been capable of rudimentary electronics technology, but they had since fallen to a less developed form due to co-evolution with a devastating brain parasite that only seemed to affect them.

  “Sadly no,” Kathryn answered, “but there is a planet which looks like it could have supported life but just seems to have never happened.  Similar mass, atmosphere, and temperature as an early Earth before life took hold on it.”

  “Hmm,” Felix pursed his lips.  “Well that’s too bad.  Nevertheless, the chance to study a planet like that would still be quite interesting to explore.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” she beamed.

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  “Jaren and I pulled some strings and we’re going to lead the mission, get out there like we used to and do some real research and exploration again.”

  Felix laughed.  “Oh really?  Ah, well good for you!  You’ve certainly earned it.”

  “We’re going to need a really use a good engineer, Felix.”

  “Oh.  Oh!  You mean like, well yeah, that sounds great!  I mean I’ll have to check with Taj, but yeah I don’t see why not.  Oh man, it’d be great to get away for a few months, see a new system… fantastic.”

  “Good to hear,” Kathryn said.

  “Whoa whoa whoa,” Margaret said.  “If you too are going on some kind of adventure, there’s no way I’m just sticking around here.  I’m coming with too.”

  “You’re welcome to of course Margaret, but like I told my daughter it’s no vacation cruise.  If you come along you’ll be crew, expected to pull your own weight and go on the duty roster just like everyone else.”

  “Right now, different is better,” Margaret remarked.  “I’ve got to get out of here, especially if Felix won’t be here.  I can’t imagine how unbearable this place would be without him.  Yes, I’m in.”

  Kathryn glanced at Felix to catch his appreciation of her casual expression of fondness for him.

  “Hey thanks Margaret,” he offered.  “That’s very nice of you to say.”

  “You should bring your dummy too,” she countered in reference to P4, deliberately blunting her kindness as she was wont to do.  Felix looked back down at the robot and sighed.

  “No, you really should Felix,” Kathryn advised.  “There’ll be a lot of down time in transit for you to work on him.”

  “Yeah true enough…  So anyways, what ship are we taking?”

  “Oh, that’s the best part!  New Horizon II herself has been re-tasked to us.  It’ll be here in about two weeks, so you have that long to get ready to go.

  “Nice!” Felix exclaimed.  “I’ve always wanted a good look at that ship, it’s supposed to be something pretty special.”

  “From what I understand it really is.  I’ll always have a soft spot for the original of course, but I’m very impressed with what this new one is supposed to be able to do.  It’ll only take ten days to get here from the Haven’s outer binary giants.”

  “Wow, yeah…” Felix marveled at the ship’s speed.  “Definitely a fast bird, that one.”

  “Right,” Kathryn pressed her finger to the work bench.  “Okay.  Two weeks then.  Talk it over with Taj and get back to me.”

  “I’m in either way of course,” Margaret declared.  “Think I’ll bring Patricia along as well,” she added with a mischievous smile.  Felix shot a look Kathryn to see how she’d respond.  “You know I’ve been saving that first cigar for a special occasion.  Sounds like we’re likely to have one on this trip.”

  Kathryn sighed in response and moved her hand up to slowly rub the outer edges of her eyes with her thumb and forefinger.  “Again, not a pleasure cruise Margaret, don’t think it’s appropriate to bring your personal assistant.”

  “She has become far more than that Kat and you know it.  Don’t you worry, I’ll make sure she pulls her own weight like the rest of us.

  At a loss for how to prevent it without giving too much away, she instead chose not to bother fighting it.  Margaret was right, Patricia had really skilled up over the last fifteen years and had become inarguably valuable crew.  Kathryn had gotten pretty good at holding back on the station all these years; she saw no reason why she couldn’t continue to do so as easily on the ship.

  “Fair enough,” Kathryn said with a shrug as she turned to leave.  “I’ll catch up with you all later then.”