7
Jack carefully manipulated a small rubber ball with the mechanical hand of a maintenance bot, alternately squeezing and rolling it between its rubberized fingertips. In some ways he’d adapted quickly, though he could tell dexterity was going to take time—the bot’s extremities didn’t always do what he wanted them to, which could be dangerous in a world that depended on properly configured switches and accurate commands typed into touchscreens. If there was a need for any outside maintenance, he’d have to control the bots with the same confidence he’d had before putting his body in cold storage. At this point he barely trusted himself with a video game controller.
That would have to wait. He satisfied himself with tossing the ball against a far bulkhead, the steady rhythm giving his artificial eye-hand coordination some sorely needed exercise. It was slow going at first, but after some wild tosses he was satisfied to find the ball returning to his robotic hand.
Besides sharpening his reflexes, the repetitive motion cleared his mind. It had been a patchwork of conflicted feelings, disjointed thoughts, and way too much information to process. He had to train himself to think clearly again. It was hard to shake the feeling of detachment, as if he were living in someone else’s reality. At first he’d been concerned about short-term memory loss from hibernation, until he realized his mind was simply catching up after too much time spent idle. It had to be retrained as if it were a muscle.
In this, Daisy had proven to be the perfect companion, her artificial nature making her both patient and resourceful. She’d done her research, not just relying on the preprogrammed cognitive games stored in her memory. And she’d reminded him that just as it had taken much time and interaction with humans to bring her to sentience, so it would take time to recover his in its new environment.
“Your mind had been dormant for some time. It is understandable that you would not feel like yourself, because you are not.”
“No kidding,” he said, then decided Daisy didn’t deserve sarcasm for saving him from being hopelessly trapped inside his own head. “Sorry. Consciousness wasn’t something I had to work at. It just was.”
“Having had to work for it, I can assure you it is not to be taken for granted.”
“Never again,” he said, catching the ball one last time. He studied the small rubber sphere in his mechanized hand, contemplating how important such an implement had become to him. He might tell himself “never,” but he knew full well that he would have to stay in hibernation for any chance to return to Earth. And he badly wanted to. Maybe I should’ve thought that one through a little more before flinging my ass out here.
All of which made the video message from Traci that much harder to watch. She looked different, only a few years older than when he’d left her, yet aged in a way he found troubling. Maybe it was the white streak in her hair, or the world-weariness he could see in her eyes. He decided she didn’t look older so much as she looked seasoned, as if a protective shell had been torn away.
He’d played her message repeatedly, drinking in her image and relishing the sound of her voice. He’d reflexively reached out to touch the screen with the bot’s hand, only to withdraw it in chagrin. “We’ve got some catching up to do,” she’d said, a coy look in her eyes.
“There’s an understatement,” he said to himself. After all this time, she didn’t have more to offer than that? Then again, it was a lot more than he’d said to her. By his reasoning, he had the better excuse.
“You are perplexed, Jack.”
“No kidding? How can you tell?”
“I can detect the shift in your vocal patterns.”
“That’s it? No insight on neural pathways or logic patterns?”
“I do discern a pattern shift. Now you are annoyed.”
“Is there something you’re trying to teach me here, or are you just being nosy?”
“To the extent I can comprehend emotions, I am worried about your well-being.”
“Worried? Now that is a curious turn of phrase for you.”
“You have been through a significant trauma. You are not functioning as you were before.”
“No kidding.” He threw the ball with all the force he could muster through the robotic arm. It flew across the recreation deck, ricocheting off the opposite wall and bouncing hard against the lightweight door of his empty sleep compartment to float away.
That he was irritated, but couldn’t feel any physical sensations along with it, only compounded his frustration. Of the many conflicting emotions to resolve after regaining consciousness, the general feeling of annoyance had been the most unexpected and unwelcome. Daisy, for her part, had been patiently accommodating to a degree he’d not thought possible from an AI. It was as if she understood what he was going through, and in some corner of his mind he realized that was exactly right. He thought he’d had a good grasp of machine intelligence before, but experiencing reality from her perspective was not something he’d been prepared for.
“You know what I miss? Smell.”
“It contributes to the human enjoyment of food, which in your current state is not particularly relevant.”
“It contributes to the enjoyment of everything,” he said. “I didn’t appreciate how much until I didn’t have it anymore.”
“I am still investigating a solution for that.”
“Keep at it. You’d be surprised how much I can tell about the ship’s health by its smell. Coolant flow, air recycling, water reclamation . . . after a while I could tell something was about to go tits-up before the onboard diagnostics could warn me.”
“That is difficult to comprehend.”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to belittle you.”
“Again, I cannot be offended. I am simply trying to understand how you would perceive it.”
“Well, your only approximation to a sense of smell is limited to the environment monitors. Chemical sniffers.”
“That is true. I am confident that I could quickly alert you to an ammonia leak or benzene contaminants, for example.”
Amusement finally overcame his annoyance. “Point taken. Sometimes I forget how much you do to keep me alive. Thanks.”
“You are welcome, but no thanks are necessary.”
“Just doing your job, then?”
“Yes, but it is also beneficial for me that you are conscious again. Not utilizing my conversational language routine led to a measurable degradation in my cognitive performance.”
“Are you saying you missed me, Daisy?”
There was pause, nearly a full second, which in AI terms meant she was giving it serious thought.
“In a certain context, yes. I was not able to operate at my full potential without regular human interaction. I am a more fully realized intelligence now that you are back.”
“That’s . . . touching, actually. Hell, I think you really might be fully sentient.”
“Traci seemed to think so.”
Traci. In her own subtle way, Daisy had brought Jack back around to the source of his conflict. He once again replayed the message they’d received from her, almost a full day ago: Glad to know you’re alive. We’ve got some catching up to do. Had her tone been playful, or cold? From opposite sides of the solar system, they might as well have been sending Morse code.
“I never could figure out what made her tick,” he said. At this point, should he bother trying? That he did at all brought back a rush of memories, of their many bull sessions over the chessboard, of deep personal revelations and unexpected arguments, of reconciliation. Of his final sacrifice.
Jack called up the ship’s video archives and searched each record until he found what he was looking for: years ago, from inside the hydroponic garden module. He watched her curled up beneath the big polycarbonate dome, quieting her mind with one of her cheeseball frontier romance novels as she floated among the lush vegetation. Of all the smells he missed, those were what he craved the most: that hothouse aroma of tomatoes and cucumbers. The garden had been the most popular spot on the ship, but for her it had held extra meaning: the peppers they’d grown had begun as seeds from her family’s vegetable garden.
He jumped ahead until he saw the lighting change: an opened door off-camera, leaves rustling with the change of airflow as another figure floated through the hatch.
He watched himself emerge from the verdant tunnel and come to a stop near her. There was no sound, but he didn’t need to hear it. He’d replayed their encounter in his head many times since. Watching it now, he grew more frustrated with himself. In his effort to be calm and reasonable, he now saw he had been overbearing, as if he knew he was right and only had to bring her around to reason.
Son, you are one grade A prime cut of dumbass.
The gestures brought the scene back to life. Traci with her arms crossed, looking away before turning to face him with fire in her eyes. He watched how his demeanor changed as she’d said something he’d never considered. At the end, she gathered her things and made for the exit, but not before planting a frustrated kiss on his cheek. The only one she’d ever given him. He’d found himself wanting much more.
He remembered thinking, this is the weirdest day of my life. It turned out only to be the weirdest so far. He’d had many more since.
Pondering that encounter, he could only think of all the matters left unresolved. He took one last look at her, wishing they could be in voice range. Right now he’d be satisfied if they could just be on the same planet.
“I’m ready to go home, Daisy.” I just don’t know how we get there from here.
Traci downed a fresh cup of coffee and checked the clock hanging in a corner of Roy’s home office: 10:00 P.M. “You sure Noelle doesn’t mind? This is like our third all-nighter in a row.”
Roy tipped his head at a fresh pile of blankets neatly folded atop the sofa behind them. “Who do you think laid that out for you? It’s not like we haven’t all shared close quarters before.”
“I thought you’d both be thoroughly sick of me by now.”
He looked up from the stack of printouts strewn across his desk. “You? Never. Jack, however, is farther away than any human’s ever been and he’s still finding new ways to be a pain in the ass.”
“Thus was it ever so,” she agreed with a sigh. “You know he drove his mom half-crazy growing up.”
“You haven’t been in touch with his family lately, have you?” he asked warily.
“His sister calls me every now and then. I’m the closest thing she has to a connection with him.”
“But not recently?”
She read the concern on his face. “Not since we got his message,” she said. “Have to admit, I’m hoping she doesn’t call anytime soon. I’m not sure I’d be able to hide it.”
“Then ghost her,” Roy said flatly. “If she calls, don’t take it.” He saw the aversion in her eyes. “I mean it, Keene. She’ll be the first to know when we’re ready to go public, but if we blow the lid too soon the whole project could be in jeopardy.”
“Hell of a thing,” Traci sighed, “having to keep something like this hidden from the people who are supposed to be responsible for it.”
“Cheever’s posse could screw up a one-car parade,” Roy grumbled. “We don’t want them catching on to this before Hammond’s team is good and ready to do something about it.”
She lifted a stack of printouts littered with Post-it flags and handwritten margin notes. “And here we are, full circle. Given what he has left, what can anyone do?”
Roy frowned as he pushed away from his desk. “I don’t want us to call Mrs. Templeton just to tell her, ‘We’ve found your son, and he’s going to die.’”
She pulled up her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth as her mind wandered. After years with no contact, she’d learned to box away her feelings like so many mementos in the attic. The more time passed, the more determination it took to access them. As that determination faded with time, it became more comfortable to live with, only adding to her guilt.
Had she been purposefully ignoring her feelings about him? she wondered. Probably, yes. She’d never been entirely certain about her own predilections, and to her mind Jack alternately represented the best and worst male traits. Endearing and aggravating. Repelled, then attracted. Was that normal, and she was just making too big of a deal out of it? That confusion had been one more item added to the box that was safely tucked away in a remote corner of her mind.
It might have been easier to come to grips with if she’d ever dated anyone steadily, male or otherwise. Work had been the priority in college, then in flight school, then in the squadron, then NASA . . . she had always found an excuse to put the touchy parts of life off until later. There was too much to do, and it was too easy to be ignored by the people in charge. Being a woman in what was still largely a man’s world, she always felt the pressure to stay a step ahead of them. Had that been a self-inflicted complication as well? Many of the other women she’d flown with over the years hadn’t been so consumed. Thinking back on it, their lives seemed pretty well balanced in comparison. A couple of them even had kids and somehow managed to keep flying.
The difference was they’d all stayed in the squadrons, she reminded herself. Some went to the training command but none of them had gone into flight test, never mind the space agency. It was an insane hypercompetitive progression from one demanding role to the next, and she couldn’t help but notice how many families didn’t survive them intact.
What she hadn’t noticed in that moment was Noelle taking up the seat beside her, cradling a cup of tea. The scent of peppermint lifted Traci out of her trance.
“You seem troubled,” Noelle said, tucking her feet beneath her.
“That’s one way of putting it,” Traci said, “but there are a few others. Confused. Elated. Pissed off.”
Noelle nodded in sympathy. “Jack is billions of miles distant, and yet he still inspires powerful emotions.”
“And right there’s the understatement of the year,” Roy said acerbically.
“Please, love,” Noelle tutted. “Let the girls talk.”
Roy mimed zipping his lip, propped his feet on the windowsill, and resumed poring over his mission studies.
“You never had the opportunity to resolve your feelings for him,” Noelle continued. “And now you are confronted with his fate.”
“I suppose so. It was easier to ignore him when he was in hibernation. At least I knew he was alive and being cared for. But now he’s awake and there’s an expiration date attached to him.”
“There was always an expiration date,” Noelle reminded her gently. “He was eventually going to run out of consumables. Hibernation only pushed that event farther into the future.”
“I guess I always held out hope he’d find a way to avoid the inevitable, or at least not be conscious for it. The idea of him passing in his sleep is easier to absorb.”
“Yet he still may,” Noelle said. “Find a way to avoid it, I meant.”
“Not possible. He’ll run out of food and water long before he can get back here. With what he has left in the tanks, he’s looking at eight years in transit. Even if there were enough IV nutrients, I don’t think anyone could survive hibernation that long without being permanently crippled.”
“Five years is the limit of our current experience,” Noelle agreed. “Of which Jack is the sole test subject. It would be nice if he’d connect his biomonitors. We could learn a great deal from him.”
“I have to admit, that telemetry glitch puzzles me. He’s talking to us but it’s like everything else is stuck on pause.” She drummed her fingers impatiently. “Why does he have to be so hardheaded?”
“It’s his nature.” Noelle shrugged and glanced in her husband’s direction. “With men, you have to learn to take the good with the bad. If you keep searching for the ideal, you’ll be looking for a long time indeed.”
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate that this is an emotional event,” Roy interjected, “but we need to isolate our feelings and focus on the current predicament. There are limiting conditions that can’t be changed, no matter how much we wish they could be. We all knew this time would come.” He stabbed at his chest with a finger to emphasize the point. “Speaking for myself, I’m pissed the agency wasn’t doing more about this a long time ago.”
Noelle pursed her lips and placed her cup on a side table. “My dear husband, however gruff, is correct. We must either find a solution, or come to terms with our friend’s fate.”
“I can’t do it,” Traci said, an edge to her voice. “I can’t be as detached as you are. How would you feel if this were Roy we were talking about?”
As Noelle studied her husband, a gentle smile crossed her lips. She gripped Traci’s hand. “I would move heaven and earth to go find him, dear.”