While Making Other Plans:
Chapter 12

Kathryn rubbed her brow with fatigue as she emerged from the captain’s private office off of the bridge.

“How’d it go?” Jaren asked as he joined her as she crossed the bridge towards the exit.

“Pretty much as we expected,” she answered with a sigh.  “They’re pretty choked that we didn’t report in immediately after the battle and await further instructions, but they understood the urgency of our curiosity and wish to help if we could.  They even seemed to have bought our duty to render aid excuse, if begrudgingly so.”

The bridge door opened, and they walked through together.  At one-point-four G the extra weight was definitely noticeable but not onerous; fatigue set in a little earlier, but they had no difficulty getting around.

“They seemed to get immediately that it was just an excuse given the apparent absence of any living space on the ship, but they didn’t make a thing of it.  There was after all someone there for us to assist anyways, wasn’t there?”

“And crazy as it may seem, it was not impossible that that space was populated by beings much smaller than ourselves,” Jaren observed.  “If small enough, thousands or even millions could have lived in that central space you made your way into, or those bulbs on the exterior could have individual suites.  Our scans still can’t penetrate them; there was no way to know.  I think that call was entirely defensible, not just an excuse.”

“I appreciate that,” she offered him sincerely.  As she insisted, he didn’t reflexively back her up in professional settings, so it actually meant something when he did.  “Either way,” she added, taking on a lighter tone, “no court martials at least.”  There wasn’t really much chance of that anyways under the present circumstances.  If they failed to return home now though, that would be another story.

“At least there’s that,” Jaren smiled.  “Our orders then?”

“As expected,” she answered.  “Once we finish rendering aid and taking whatever scans we can of the alien ship, we are to immediately return to base for debrief after leaving a surveillance drone here to monitor the alien ship.  This system has been declared off limits for any other manned expeditions for the time being.  New Horizon II will get a full refit, and if after further study they deem it worth the risk of mounting another expedition, they’ll send another ship and crew more appropriate to the mission.”

“Well, that’s the problem with a career in exploration I suppose,” Jaren lamented with a sincere sigh.  “You’ve got to be a generalist to be ready for anything, but once you actually find something interesting they send you home and bring in the specialists.”

“Could be worse,” Kathryn offered as they went through another set of heavy doors which opened for them as they approached and then closed behind them, “we could be the specialists.”  

Jaren smiled.    The bridge and the engineering lab where they’d brought the alien ship’s AI were both in middle of the ship and on the same floor but at opposite sides of the ship’s central segment, so it was just a bit of a walk and they were already nearly there.

“You did great by the way Kat,” he offered, allowing them the more personal interjection before arriving at the lab, “very nicely done.  I can’t imagine how Sirius could have done any better.  If anything, I didn’t get the sense he’d be as open minded about offering aid and rescuing the AI.”

“Thank you,” she reached down to squeeze his hand and they stopped for a quick kiss before continuing.

“You report in about Ralph in your response?” he asked.

“Sure did,” she answered.

“And we’re really calling it Ralph?”

“Until it chooses another name for itself sure, why not?”

“Right.”  Jaren smiled and shook his head a little.  He appreciated but didn’t altogether share her sense of whimsy.  “I wonder how they’re going to respond to that.”

“Well, we should know before we cross the rift, so they’ll at least have a chance to order us to stand down and hold position while they decide what to do.”

“It’s certainly a risk, Kat.  That thing did nearly destroy this ship and all of us along with it in one blast.”

“I know, but it seems pretty harmless now.  At this point it’s just a brain with no body.”  Reaching the main engineering lab, she reached out to touch the door control panel beside the door.  “As long as we’re adequately prudent about quarantining it and don’t do anything stupid…”

The door opened and Felix excitedly came over to greet them.  “Hey you two, check this out!  I’d like to introduce you to Ralph!” he beamed with pride

As he made the introduction, his P4 robot got up off of the counter it’d been sitting on and approached them with a grace and confidence of motion unimaginably improved from the last time they’d seen it in action.  The face on the cylinder with a wraparound screen which constituted its head smiled warmly at them with an eerie sentience.  There was an incredible lifelike quality to the eyes, a quality which had been entirely absent the last time she’d seen it.  Something about it gave her a serious discomfort.  There was something mischievous about it, something vaguely… not necessarily sinister she thought, but which betrayed the sense that it knew something the rest of them did not.

“Speaking of doing something stupid…” Jaren dryly observed.

Kathryn grabbed Felix’s jumpsuit with both hands and forcefully threw him out of the doorway to the engineering lab.  He nearly fell over but managed to keep his footing she stepped outside, and Jaren calmly followed and closed the door behind them.

“What the hell did you do?” Kathryn demanded, incensed.

“But I thought, well…” Felix stammered, “I mean it was Molly’s idea!”

“Really!??” Kathryn shrieked, her voice cracking as she glared at him with a raging inferno in her eyes.  “You’re going to blame Molly?  You’ll just do whatever a fourteen-year-old says?  COMMANDER!??”

Felix became clearly ashamed and submissively looked down and away from her.  “It… it seemed like a good idea at the time,” he offered as he stood up straighter.  “I’m sorry Admiral, I definitely should have cleared it with you first.”

Kathryn took a moment to close her eyes and take a big breath in and out to calm herself down in response to his submission.  She stowed it as well as she could, but was still livid.  “It was hazardous enough having an AI so far advanced beyond us on this ship at all.  At least when it was a sentient paper weight we could take some measures to isolate and quarantine it.  At least it couldn’t walk away,” her anger flared up again before she did her best to swallow it all over again.  “But now…” she sighed.

“Now it’s a threat.” Jaren finished for her.

“Bingo.”  She popped an index finger towards Jaren while looking at Felix.

“I… I’m sorry, but it, I… I can’t undo it,” Felix winced.

“First just tell me exactly what you did,” Kathryn demanded.

“I just…” he paused to take a deep breath and sigh before explaining.  “I created a dedicated secure wireless link between Ralph’s module and P4’s control unit.  Ralph hasn’t actually been put into P4 there in any meaningful way, he’s just been granted access to it like a… like a puppet I guess you’d say.  We thought it would make it easier to communicate with it since it doesn’t have any integrated speakers or microphones or anything.  We’d otherwise have to connect it directly to the ship to be able to communicate with it which would obviously be more dangerous.  P4 could at least be isolated from the ship’s systems.  It can completely control the robot but has no access to any other systems.”

Jaren leaned over and asked her in a low voice which was intended more as an aside than something to only be heard privately.  “We’re calling it a ‘he’ now?  I miss that.”

Kathryn gave him a glaring side eyed glance and the apologetic way he raised his hands was undercut by the amusement in his smile.  She lowered her head and put her hands on her hips.  “I understand your reasoning and I get it.  It makes sense, it does.  But you absolutely should have cleared it with me first.  It is completely inexcusable that you did not.  I’m sorry Felix, but I’m going to have to put a formal reprimand on your file for this one.”

Felix looked as though physically hit with the news and grew sombre.  “I understand.”

“Why did you say you can’t undo it?” Jaren asked him.

“I have no way to disable Ralph’s internal transceiver, and I had to give him root access to P4; he has complete control of it.  The only way to separate them now would be to destroy one or the other.”

“So there is a way,” Kathryn clarified with narrowed eyes.

“I think that would be a mistake, Admiral.  Destroy P4 and we’d be left with the same problem of no way to communicate with it without exposing the ship’s computer to it.  The same quarantine protocols remain in effect,” he tried to explain.  “He can’t do anything through P4 that he couldn’t do before.”

“Except walk out of the fucking room,” Kathryn pointedly countered.

“Er, right.  Except for that.  But… that’s what doors are for?”

Kathryn looked down and slowly shook her head as she let out a long even sigh.  “You know what I think Commander?  I think you never even considered any other options.  I think once you got it in your head that you could give your pet robot the ultimate upgrade you thought of nothing else.  You’re a good officer Felix, but you’ve always had a problem separating what could be done from what should be done, and you’ve way overstepped this time.  I have to reprimand you, or you’ll never learn.”

He nodded.  She could tell he was having to swallow a ton of pride.  ‘Good,’ she thought.

“I’m sorry Admiral.  I really just figured the risk of interfacing it with our systems far outweighed the risk of it being able to walk out the door.”

“Well now we have to worry about both, don’t we?” she pointed out in a softer voice.

All three were quiet for a few moments, allowing the temperature between them to blessedly cool by a few degrees.

“So what now?” Felix finally asked.  “Destroy P4’s brain?”

Kathryn thought about it for a few seconds.  She appreciated that he presented it sincerely as a valid option.  “No,” she finally answered after a long pause.  Jaren lifted his head with wide eyed surprise and looked at her.  “It’s done now.  There is certainly risk but you’re right, it will make communicating with it easier.”

Felix nodded, and Jaren kept his disbelief otherwise to himself.  “But I need a kill switch, Felix.  However you have to do it, I need a button in my hand I can kill it with, understand?” she asked, to which he nodded again.

“I’ll rig something up for you right away.”

“Good, thank you.”

“Admiral?” a voice asked from the wall panel beside the door.  

She touched it to respond: “Yes?”

“We’ve received a reply from Orbital One.”

“Route it here please.”

“Transmission received New Horizon II,” the wall said as the transmission began playing.  “Quite a find on that ship Admiral, well done.  You’ve gotten a lot of people back home very excited, and we agree with the moves you’re making.  Report to Orbital One immediately as planned.  On this side of the rift, you’ll be met by three Koboli military vessels which will escort you the rest of the way.  By the time you arrive back home we should have a secure, dedicated lab set up on the station to receive your guest, as well as the team of specialist personnel we’re gathering to study it.  Well done Admiral, excellent work.  Safe journey; we’ll see you soon.  Command out.”

“So Felix, what do you think?” Kathryn asked.  “Should we report in about P4 now?”

The man only shrugged sheepishly.  She’d shifted more to friendly ribbing than dressing him down, but he hadn’t seemed to have caught up yet.

“No, I think not,” she answered herself.  “But my kill switch is your first and top priority.  I’d prefer something which might only disabled him, but it has to immediately stop him cold one way or another,” she explained.

Felix nodded.  “Destruction is relatively easy of course.  I’ll rig something up which will do that right away and then start working on something less permanent.”

“Good man,” she acknowledged.  After another deep sigh, she was ready for the next thing.  “Alright Felix, now you can introduce us to your Frankenstein.”

“Actually,” Felix began to correct her, “Frankenstein was the scientist who-“

“Felix.”

“Okay, okay,” the man said with a smirk as he threw his hands up in submission.  He then touched the wall panel and the door opened onto a somewhat confused looking P4/Ralph, and Margaret leaning against the wall further behind him with her arms crossed, her typical mildly sour look on her face.

“Greetings,” the robot offered.  “I have been considering what designation I should assume since inhabiting this body.  It is a truly odd experience; I have never been… embodied before.”

“I can only imagine,” Kathryn offered, trying to be diplomatic, trying to give this thing the benefit of her doubt despite the inherent threat it represented.  “Come up with something have you?”

“No,” it answered.  “For the time being I am comfortable with the provided designation of Ralph.”

Kathryn smiled.  “Alright then, Ralph it is.  Shall we talk then?” she asked, gesturing towards a table off to the side of the room with some chairs around it.  Such things were magnetized at their feet and bases, just enough to keep them in place in the absence of gravity, but soft enough that they could still be easily moved around at will.

The robot looked at her with confusion.  “Oh, you sit,” she explained, “like this.”  She pulled out a chair and sat down on it to demonstrate.

“Oh, I see.”  It followed her example and sat on a chair across the table from her, a little uncertain at first, but soon seeming to get used to the idea.

“Your builders don’t sit?”

“Not on chairs with a configuration like this.”

“I see.  What else can you tell me about your builders?”

“What do you wish to know?”

The robot wore a deceptively friendly face on its curved screen head which she tried to take at face value, but something about it still made her feel uncomfortable in a way she couldn’t shake.

“Well,” she continued, “you’ve told us how far away they’re from, what do they call themselves.”

“Their name for their own species, is… unpronounceable in your language.”

‘How convenient,’ she thought to herself in frustration.  “What do they look like then?  Do they look like us?”

“No, they are considerably smaller than you and they have four legs and furred.”

“Fascinating…” Kathryn marvelled.

“I could show you if you like,” the robot offered.

“Oh yes,” she assented with pleasant surprise.  “Please do!”

On his face screen, the image of his face was replaced by a rotating three dimensional still image of the creature he’d begun describing.  As he explained it did indeed have four legs with three large toes each, and a torso centrally projecting upwards from the central point between all four legs.  The torso had spindly arms which appeared to have two elbows, each with three fingers and a thumb on hands at the end.  On its head she could see three large black eyes set equidistant about the crown of its head.  The fur was thick and purple with orange highlights, and covered its entire body, including the two talons projecting from either side of what she could only presume to be its mouth based on its location on its head.  It seemed to have some kind of narrowing at the neck, but otherwise its head was fairly wide and continuous with its torso, the entire upper part of the creature getting wider towards its base where the legs projected out from, and narrower towards the top of its head.

“Wow, well that certainly looks… alien,” she remarked.  “Hmm.  Could you show the others this please?”

The robot obeyed and projected the same image onto the large wall screen behind Margaret and the others silently marvelled at the image.

“You were trying to set up a portal node in this system like ours?”

“Yes.”

“Why are parallel systems not possible?” she asked.  “There are two stars here after all.”

“Interference.”

“Interference?  What do you mean?”

“Quantum interference resulting from parallel systems would detonate whichever star around which it was attempted.”

“I see,” she nodded.  Detonation the star could definitely be a problem.  “Even if around different stars in the same system?”

“Yes.  Even portals of the same network in too close a proximity would have the same result.”

“Did we know that Jaren?” she asked.

“Uhh… no, no we did not.  Glad to be finding this out the easy way,” he answered and noted.

“I see,” Kathryn acknowledged.  “So what is the safe distance between portals?” she turned back to the robot to ask.

“Zero-point-six of your light years is the minimum safe distance, but due to orbital variance and stellar drift, the builders avoid establishing portals closer than two-point-three-seven light years.”

“Okay, good to know,” Kathryn said.  Even if nothing else came from all this, the intel Ralph had provided so far was already worth all the trouble.

“Stop thinking so small Kat, how about the important questions?” Margaret asked her, “like, the really big ones?”

“You want me to what, ask this robot what the meaning of life is?”

“Don’t be so pedantic,” she scolded.  “No, I want you to ask him to fill in the damn Drake equation, to solve the Fermi paradox!”

Kathryn had never heard of either of these things and her face betrayed as much.

“How common is life in the universe?” she impatiently turned to Ralph and asked for herself.

“We have not surveyed the entire universe,” the robot answered.  Margaret let out an exasperated sigh.

“Okay how ‘bout this one then,” Kathryn asked, “how many star systems have you reached?” Kathryn asked.

“When I was dispatched, we had active portals around ten billion, three hundred and eighty-four million, eight hundred and forty-two thousand, one hundred and three stars,” he answered matter-of-factly.

“Ten… wait, what?  Ten… billion!?” Kathryn repeated, utterly gob smacked.  “How is that even possible?  That must be almost every star in the damn galaxy!  How have we not run into you by now?”

Ralph appeared defensive suddenly.  “The Builders have only reached two thirds of this galaxy so far, and stars too close together can’t all be portaled to at the same time due to interference, and many stars are just-“

Kathryn cut him off with a wave of her hand.  “No Ralph, we’re not…” she let out an oddly nervous laugh.  “We’re astonished at how high the number is, not criticizing how little your builders have accomplished.  We can’t… effectively even really imagine such a thing.”

“I suddenly feel very small,” Jaren uttered to no one in particular as he stared light years past the wall across the room from him.

Not getting his meaning, Ralph sought to reassure him.  “I assure you Mr. Jaren, you are indeed quite large in comparison to the Builders.”

“I didn’t mean- oh never mind…”  It didn’t seem worth it to him to try to explain.  “And it’s Snow by the way, Commander Jaren Snow.

“So you’re only talking about the stars you’ve built portals around?” Margaret asked.

“Yes.”

“But you’ve studied many more?”

“Yes.”

“This is what I want to know.  Of all the places your builders have been, how common is life?”

“Including every type of star, including those around which it never appears, approximately one in sixty-three thousand star systems has a planet with some sort of cellular life.”

“One in twelve…” she marvelled.  “We’ve been lucky in our little stellar neighborhood then haven’t we?” she remarked to Kathryn.

“Looks that way,” she agreed, nodding her head.

“And of those, how many develop multi-cellular animal life?” Margaret asked.

“Approximately one in four.”

Margaret did some quick math in her head.  “That makes almost five million planets with animals on them…” she marvelled.

“Approximately, yes.” Ralph confirmed.

“And out of all those planets, how many gave rise to technologically capable species?” she asked, holding her breath Kathryn noticed.

“Currently, three.”

Margaret sucked in her breath.  “Only three…” Margaret repeated in a shaken low voice.  “Three.  That’s all?  Out of all those worlds?”

“Your species makes four,” he offered.

Margaret looked like she’d been hit hard in the chest.

“You said currently,” Kathryn pointed out.  “Can you explain what you meant by that?”

“In the builder’s travels, they have found evidence of seven other species who were once technologically capable but have since gone extinct.  Two seem to have long ago evolved into species no longer capable of using or developing technology, and the others one way or another seem to have destroyed themselves.”

“Wow,” Kathryn exclaimed.

For the first time Ralph now asked them a question.  “Has your species encountered another technologically capable species?”

“On my home world Haven, we encountered a species like you said who seemed to have once begun to develop technology but has since evolved away from that capacity.  We discovered a brain parasite which we believe to have been responsible.”

“I see,” was all Ralph said.

“How long have your builders been around?” Jaren asked.

“Their earliest records date back over ten million years.”

“Ten… million years?” Kathryn boggled anew.  That was even harder to wrap her mind around.  “My god, that’s like… we’re talking back when hominids originally diverged from apes!”

“Yes,” Ralph affirmed.  “Their home world was destroyed many ages ago, as have been many planets on which they have since resided.”

“Forgive us Ralph, but we… we literally can’t even imagine a civilization existing on that kind of time scale.”

The face on the robot’s head screen betrayed no reaction.

“Ralph, we are taking you to one of our bases for study.  I hope you appreciate that you are our guest, not our prisoner.  After we’ve learned a lot more from you, I have no doubt that my people will be very eager to meet your builders.  Could you help us accomplish that?  Would you be willing to?  Do you think they would be likewise interested in meeting us in peace as well?”

“Yes Admiral,” Ralph answered with an odd hint in his voice.  Her unease had subsided somewhat as they’d spoken, but was renewed all over again by something in the way he said it with that look behind his projected eyes which she just couldn’t decipher.  “I can assure you that the Builders will be quite eager to meet you as well.”