While Making Other Plans:
Chapter 24

  “Well, want to give us a tour of the ship?” Jaren asked Ralph.

  “There is not much to see,” the robot plaintively answered.  “Most of the volume of this ship is void space,” he explained, “low density matter ready to be configured according to need.  As it presently exists, especially given the limited crew compliment, there is no such defined interior.  I would remind you that ships such as these frequently operate with no crew at all, and in such operations they require no internal structure whatsoever.”

  “We can’t even imagine the kind of technology that could be at work here…” Kathryn uttered in wonder with an edge of dread.

  “And they say there’s no such thing as magic,” Margaret remarked dryly as she studied the smoke curling up from the lit tip of her cigar and watching as it was pulled directly into the wall somehow.

  “There isn’t.”  Kathryn reflexively insisted.  “We don’t even really understand how gravity works but that doesn’t make it magic.  It stands to reason that if we did we we could figure the same technologies.”

  “Yeah, and any number of other things we haven’t figured out we don’t anything about yet,” Margaret responded.

  “We should get to the bridge…” Jaren offered with a note of irritation at the diversion, “or whatever they call it.”

  “Put your hand on the wall and say ‘Command’” Ralph instructed him.  

  Clearly hesitant given their earlier experiences, Jaren reached out and followed Ralph’s instructions.  After a few moments a doorway faded away out of the solid ethereally dark matter of the wall.  On the other side of it was a large hemispherical room, with a short hallway between the wall it had appeared out of, and the point where the hemispherical edge was tall enough to accommodate the height of the doorway.  Inside were several Bobbins seemingly hard at work, conversing in their nauseating ultra-low frequency language.

  “What… just happened?” Kathryn asked.

  “The door moved,” Ralph answered.

  “What, like some sort of… bubble through the ship?”

  “Yes.”

  Kathryn stared into the bridge blinking in disbelief for a few moments.  “Alright then,” she finally said with a shrug of acceptance at what could only be magic.  “Bill?” she asked, as she walked into the room, believing she recognized one of the Bobbins.

  As one of the creatures approached her, a sphere of material blobbed out of the wall and assumed a chrome finish on its exterior surface and flew over to accompany Bill.  She wondered if the mirror ball had been waiting in the matter of the ship, docked and in waiting somehow, or if it had actually been created freshly instantiated out of the strange material the ship was made of.

  “Yes,” it acknowledged, looking at her but seemingly askance as he did, with only two of his offset eyes ever looking at her somewhat sideways.  “We are nearing the portal; we must be ready.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Kathryn asked as she watched Jaren and Margaret wander over to the different stations to look over the Bobbin’s shoulders at what they were doing as unobtrusively as possible.  Patricia seemed less interested in the work they were doing and wandered with a somewhat child-like wide-eyed wonder at what she was seeing.  She wouldn’t describe her as innocent or child-like per se, but one of the things she loved about her was her… well, awe might be the right word.  When she’d met her she’d been Margaret’s emissary in a settlement little more advanced than hunter-gatherers, a privileged priestess of sorts, but in a community largely devoid of technology.  While she accepted and understood what she saw being around advanced technology for decades now, she hadn’t lost that sense of wonder.  Made somewhat sad at the thought of feeling like she lost that in herself long ago, it warmed her to see it still in Patricia.

  “If all goes according to plan, we should be able to broadcast our identity as friendly and approach the station undetected.  Once we dock, with the station we will attempt to board it.  We’ll make our way to their link’s core room and once in physical contact any of us can directly download the data to our own internal Link system.  We’ll then share it amongst ourselves so only one of us needs to make it back.  Our breach will be immediately detected so we’ll have to fight our way back to the ship, and once back on the ship fight our way out of the system.  We don’t expect to find a large crew on the station, this should at least be in our favour.  We expect no more than a dozen Bobbins, but…” the voice coming from the mirror ball drifted off as it took on a purple hue.

  “What is it?”

  “Tactical drones can be fabricated out of the ship material about as easily as this communications device.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes.  We do have a countermeasure though,” he said.  “We can generate a field which inhibits any manipulation of matter within the field, but at several points we will need to disengage it to make our egress which will give them an opportunity.”

  “I see,” Kathryn said with some uncertainty.  “Well, we didn’t bring any weapons with us.”

  “I know,” Bill’s ball said.  “We have a little over an hour until we reach the portal.  That should give us enough time.”

  “For what?”

  “For weapons training.”

  Bill touched one of his taloned hands against the wall where the doorway to their room had been and said something in his own language.  The same doorway appeared, but this time beyond it was a large, cavernous space.  As they stepped through, the dull black material lightened in shade as it began emitting light from every surface, gradually brightening until they were able to see clearly.

  Bill reached into the wall and pulled out an object which was about three decimeters long, a long rectangular prism less than two decimeters its short sides.  “This is… again, proper names are problematic.  It is a weapon; do you have a name you would suggest for it?”

  Kathryn looked the object which was the same dull primer black colour as everything else on the ship seemed to be.  “I don’t know, a… a wand maybe?” she suggested, looking inquisitively back at her team for feedback.  They offered only disinterested shrugs in return.

  “Very well,” Bill accepted as though he’d be happy with anything she uttered, “a wand then.  It emits a bolt of energy which is invisible on lower energy settings, but at higher energy settings it is visible as it ignites the oxygen in the air it passes through.  The technology is not entirely dissimilar to the weapon Ralph’s ship attacked you with, only less powerful and more compact.”

  Kathryn put her thumb and index finger up to her chin as she nodded that she understood.

  “There is no front or back,” he explained, “it will always shoot away from the user.  It is operated by squeezing it, the stronger you squeeze the device, the stronger the bolt of energy it will emit as a result.  Observe.”

  An ill-defined homunculus of a Bobbin grew out of the ground, and Bill shot it with the wand on low power.  The only indication of the hit was the target briefly flashing purple to indicate a hit.  It burst purple most brightly between where the eyes would be to indicate the point of impact before dissipating out over the rest of the surface in rippling waves.

  “On high power however,” Bill explained as he shot again, this time the target was utterly blown apart into innumerable pieces which showered down onto the ground before being reabsorbed and reformed up out of the ground into a new target.

  Bill handed the wand he had been holding to Kathryn, and then reached into the wall to grab more for the others.  “On full power the bolt will penetrate walls of the ship’s hull material up to two meters, but this room has shifted to the exact centre of the ship, with no adjacent rooms or equipment nearer than three meters on either side.  You should be safe to practice with the wands at will so long as you do not fire repeatedly at full power towards the same location on the wall in rapid succession.”

  Having handed out additional wands to Margaret, Jaren, and Patricia, Bill opened a doorway to a small empty transfer room which would presumably bubble him away back to the command centre.  “I suggest you practice until you feel proficient with them.  I will come for you when we arrive at the portal.”

  Kathryn spoke up before he could close the wall again.  “Bill, will we…” she hesitated, more uncertain about wanting to ask than over how to frame the question, “are we expected to kill others of your kind?”  She felt more comfortable framing the question that way instead of asking if they were allowed to.

  His mirror ball flashed a strong red as he coldly snapped “They are not my kind.”  The red faded over a few seconds, giving way to an aquamarine colour.  “Many have died on both sides,” he lamented.  “It should be sufficient to stun,” he said as he put his hand up to draw forth the wall and end the conversation, adding as the wall materialized: “but death is not forbidden.”

  “Death is not forbidden…” Kathryn softly repeated as she continued to look at where Ralph had been for a few moments after he’d left.

  “Truer words were never spoken,” Margaret remarked, prompting Kathryn to turn around to face them.

  “Right,” Kathryn refocused.  “Well let’s get some practice in then.  Kind of reminds me of the wands you Koboli developed,” she remarked to her husband.  When they had first met, she’d marvelled at the tool he frequently used which could be used both as a multi-function mechanical tool as well as a weapon which could render targets unconscious on contact.”

  “A little,” Jaren remarked as he looked it over, “but this seems to be only a weapon, and much more powerful at that.  Ralph, please call up half a dozen targets and have them move around at a speed and pattern appropriate to the Bobbins we’ll encounter.”

  Ralph obeyed, and six shadowy figures emerged up out of the ground and began scurrying about the chamber in and amongst them.

  “Perhaps for now we should limit them to down range of us,” Patricia suggested.  “We might work up to shooting them amongst us, but for now I’d like to avoid shooting any of you.”  Kathryn smirked at her politeness over likely being far more concerned at the prospect of one of them accidentally shooting her.

  Ralph nodded and the figures all moved over to the far end of the room and then continued moving about.  Jaren held out his arm first, aiming the wand as he trained on one particular figure.  He squeezed gently and the wand shot but he missed, the evidence being the purple light radiating out from a central point on the wall behind.  Kathryn flashed him a playful smile before reaching out in one motion, extending the wand, and shooting one of the moving creatures in the head.  Kathryn was a formally trained military officer while Jaren’s background was only as a diplomat and earlier than that an engineer.

  Jaren good naturedly rolled his eyes at her before they were both surprised by Margaret reaching out and shooting repeated full-strength bolts in quick succession, exploding every target in one shot before any had the chance to reform.

  “Show off…” Jaren grumbled as Kathryn watched with a smile as all of the pieces of target settle to the ground and reform up into moving targets.  

  Always insisting on showing up the humans, Margaret tossed the wand up with a gentle spin.  She caught it, then turned her back to the targets and shot over her shoulder, ripping another orange energy bolt downrange and exploding another target, which rained pieces back down to the ground an reformed again.

  No longer amused, Kathryn glared at her.  “You need to take this more seriously.  Tell me you intended to fire that shot at full power.”

  “Absolutely,” Margaret affirmed, not exactly deferent, but devoid of her usual petulance.

  “Alright, let me try…”  She squeezed harder while aiming, not as hard as she could, but what she considered to be fairly firmly.  Hitting her target, it abruptly stopped moving as it lit up entirely before dulling again and resuming its motion amongst the others.  The bolt of energy made a faint orange glow as it travelled from the tip of her wand, but nowhere near as dramatically as when Margaret had shot.  “Guess we’ll call that a kill shot…” she said as she took aim again.  This time she squeezed as hard as she could while maintaining her aim, and just as when Margaret had shot, a bright orange bolt ripped through the air, but this time she missed and it burned a hole in the wall behind the targets.  She watched as over several moments the wall reformed itself.

  Jaren gave her a look which seemed to say: ‘who’s the bad shot now?’.  He took aim again himself, and squeezing hard he produced the same bright orange bolt, this time hitting his target and causing it to explode.

   

☼   ☼   ☼

   

  Less than an hour later Bill came to retrieve them and brought them back to the command room.  They watched through the steep transparent wall towards the front of the hemispherical room as they approached the Bobbin portal cube.  As they seemed to fly directly into the seemingly solid object, Kathryn held her breath as her reptilian brain’s instinctual understanding of Newtonian dynamics anticipated the obliviating impact.  She exhaled after they emerged from the other side, and as they flew away from the star all she could see was the comparatively safe seeming inky blackness ahead of them.  As she studied the blackness, she thought she could spot any number of ships out there in it— it was too easy for the same reptilian brain’s fearful imagination to think it might be seeing countless enemy ships out there.  The black ships would only be detectable to the naked eye by their transit past a star, leaving any flicker in her visual processing of the innumerable stars to signal a possible source of imminent death.

  “Broadcasting our message,” Bill reported.

  “What are you telling them?” Kathryn asked.  The half dozen or so aliens on the ship seemed to have a fixed intent on their workstations which seemed to fit the mauve colour of Bill’s mirror ball which she’d come to associate with him having a somewhat anxious focus.

  “This ship was originally programmed to make a detailed survey of a newly accessed star system.  We are reporting that a calamity struck the system it was sent to study, and that according to protocol the ship is returning to port for upload of its findings and new instructions.”

  “What calamity?” Patricia asked.

  “A rogue stellar body flying through the system along the planetary plane either swallowing or deflecting away most of the planets.  I am reporting the ship did what it could to report the phenomenon but is now returning to base.”

  “Is that a common thing to happen?” Jaren asked.

  “Well no,” Bill answered, his ball taking a soft pink hue of annoyance.  “In fact it’s only ever been reported in one other system.”

  “A little late now,” Jaren said, “but something a little more pedestrian might have attracted less notice.  Let’s hope they buy it.”  

  Bill’s mirror ball flashed a brighter, more solid pink colour as Bill’s eyes focused on Jaren for a moment before he turned back and the colour dissipated back to its neutral silver.

  “They have ‘bought it’,” Bill said, with a quick little flash of renewed pink.  “We are clear.”

  “That was too easy,” Ralph suggested.

  “Perhaps,” Bill said with a fleeting shade of purple.  “But all appearance is that our plan has worked.”

  “It just… feels eerie,” Kathryn added.  “Can’t they tell that there are people on this ship?

  “No,” Bill said as he made a few quick jabs at his controls.  Kathryn look closer at his work station and for a moment was confused by the sparsity of the controls before she remembered that he could probably control most things via his Link implant.  “We cannot scan the interior of other ships,” Bill further explained.  “The shadow matter by its nature prevents this even between friendly ships, so they are likewise unable to scan the interior of this ship.”

  “I see,” Kathryn said, putting her thumb and index finger to her chin again.  “Well, what now?” she asked.

  “Now we wait,” Bill answered as he pushed himself back from his station.  “It’ll take us approximately four hours to reach the target base in orbit around the system’s second planet.  We will proceed as soon as we arrive.  In the meantime, you are free to prepare yourself however you see fit.”

   

☼   ☼   ☼

   

  Two hours later, about the time the ship was due to begin decelerating from their utterly speed to the New Horizon II crew, the four were back in the suite they’d been provided with.  Jaren was working with Ralph to create a bridge and translation matrix between his medium scroll and the alien systems and they’d had some success.  He was already able to manipulate the material of the ship at a distance with touch inputs to his scroll.  Now they were working on tapping the scroll directly into the Bobbin’s Link system to access the fountain of data it contained.  He wanted the capacity to access the Link in any case, but his primary rationale was to have another way to back up the relevant data once they’d secured it.  His biggest hurdle so far was that the scroll had very limited onboard data storage since it was designed to always operate in conjunction with a ubiquitous wireless network connection.

  Kathryn was busily engaged with a terminal she’d conjured out of the wall, complete with desk and chair.  She was using the time to study everything she could about the Bobbins, especially about their seemingly ludicrous rationale for the war.  Margaret had opted to conjure a bouncy ball out of the wall, and between cigar breaks idly bounced it against the wall opposite to the bed she was lying on, letting it bounce back up off of the ground and catching it, then throwing it again.  It irritating at first, but Kathyn was absorbed enough in her research that she quickly stopped noticing.

  “It really is over something that dumb…” Kathryn remarked to herself.

  “Hmm?” Margaret asked between throws, seeming only half interested in an answer.

  “The whole war…” Kathryn answered without looking back, “apparently the whole whether ones or zeroes came first has been an issue of, well I’d say religious contention ever since they first developed digital technology eons ago.  Even after they went quantum and computed in more than two states, the issue still didn’t go away, it became something more fundamental, more philosophical.  It hasn’t been a relevant question for them for thousands of years and yet they’re still happy to kill each other over it.”

  “Don’t feel too superior,” Margaret scoffed.  Bounce, bounce, catch.  “I’ve told you all sorts of stupid things humans used to kill each other over.  Millions of people killed over who’s imaginary friend was the real one they all believed in.”  Bounce, bounce, catch.  “Doesn’t seem much different to me.”

  “Yeah, I get that, it’s just… it’s still just hard to believe.  You’d think a species this advanced…”

  Bounce, bounce, catch.  

  “The older an argument the deeper the conviction,” Margaret said with a shrug.  “That’s how it works.  It hasn’t been about which state comes first for thousands of years.  Now it’s just about who’s right, which tribe is more just.”  Bounce, bounce, catch.  “I don’t it surprising at all for something so trivial to be behind such a massive conflict.  Anything of actual consequence these critters seem more than capable of figuring out pretty quickly.  For them it would have to be something so trivial.”  Bounce, bounce, catch.

  “Still…” Kathryn said, but had nowhere to go with it.

  “What worries me more is the whole Link being permanently left on thing.”  Bounce, bounce, catch.  “That’s what really creeps me out about them.  I get the appeal of turning on the link periodically, the overwhelming sense of connectedness and being at one with the universe and everything… if you’re into that sort of thing,” she said, giving the impression that she herself would certainly not.  Bounce, bounce, catch.  “But to just turn off the whole individual part, to just leave it on indefinitely, to voluntarily become just one part of a larger hive mind and just utterly lose yourself in it,” the simulated old woman visibly shuddered, “no way.  Even as an emergency war measure…” she shook her head, “no way.  If I’m not me, if ‘me’ has totally dissolved away,” she emphasized with air quotes, “then there’s no stakes anymore.  There’s no me to fight over or for anymore.  To win that way…”  Bounce, bounce, catch.  “You’ve already lost.”

  “Maybe…” Kathryn considered as she continued to review the information.  “It looks like there may be a connection.  There’s always been a small minority who have challenged the accepted answer on the binary question, but there has also always been a minority who have argued that it would be better to live in the Link permanently.  It seems there was always a significant crossover between the movements, but I can’t make heads or tails of what that connection might be.”

  “Maybe the argument over the first binary digit is just a means of bringing about a conflict which would require leaving the link on to win,” Jaren offered without looking up from his work.  “Wouldn’t be the first time a meaningless debate was exploited as a pretext to something else.”

  “You’re more right than you know…” Margaret affirmed.  Bounce, bounce, catch.

  “Have we stopped to consider if we’re even on the right side here?” Patricia asked as she continued to look out the window at the stars.  “Should we even be taking sides here at all?” she distantly asked.

  Kathryn looked up at her.  She hadn’t really considered that before now.  “I share your concern,” she answered.  “But these people so far have been nothing but helpful and generous to us, and it’s their enemy who attacked us and stole Maggie along with New Horizon’s computer core.  I certainly would have preferred to remain neutral, but things just didn’t play out that way.”

  Bounce, bounce, catch.