Colonies aren’t welcoming to people like me. Outworlders. Which is ironic, considering these colonies sit at the far edge of explored space. By definition, they should be the outworlders. But life isn’t that fair.
They’ve built efficient, thriving societies. Enough to feel entitled to point fingers. Most are mining colonies, settled on mineral-rich worlds. The materials they extract are essential to humanity’s survival.
Me? I’m Callen. Raised by my mother on a distant mining station. The only reason I’m labeled an outworlder is because I wasn’t born in one of the approved colonies. Never mind that I was raised by men who were.
You can imagine how hard it is to get steady work when people see you as an outsider. Still, I manage.
As a boy, my mother, Anita, understood these prejudices. She made sure I had a skill set. “You’ll need one, Cal, if you want to be welcome in these worlds,” she told me. And she was right.
Each station out here runs on AI. Navigation, healthcare, even as personal companions. They also store and access the entirety of mankind’s knowledge. But my mother used her access to build me a custom AI of my own. Not as advanced, but good enough. It had one job. To teach.
I didn’t have siblings or classmates or teachers. I had Zeus.
I called it Zeus for no other reason than I liked the name. It taught me everything. Its most important lesson? AI.
Now I travel the outer colonies maintaining AI systems. My skills are rare, but essential. Even the most suspicious colony needs a qualified technician. That’s how I get by. That’s how I’m accepted. Or at least, how my profession is.
And that’s how I ended up here on an asteroid in geostationary orbit above Valhalla, a colony settled by Norwegians. We humans do love our flair for the dramatic.
The asteroid itself is privately owned by Crater and Co., and they’re in the process of selling the station built on its surface to the Valhalla colony. The orbital thrusters placed it into position just a month ago, and I’ve been contracted to decommission the old AI and install a newer, colony-compatible system.
The suit is tight and uncomfortable. They always are. No matter the brand they aren’t tailored for a guy like me. Sure many men are tall and broad shouldered, but I feel that I’m broader than most, or so say my suits.
The airlock hisses closed behind me, sealing me off from the hostile vacuum on the other side. The process only takes a minute or so before the station door opens to allow entrance. I take two steps into the long hallway, then steal a peek at my environmental gauge on my wrist. It is now safe to move about the cabin. I click the latches for my helmet and rotate it ninety degrees. Cool air rushes in, brushing across my neck and face.
The lights above were still glowing to life. No need to have them running while no one was there to use them. These stations give me the creeps. Each of my heavy steps echoes down the hall into the large facility. Cameras record everything in these stations, but I don’t care. “Hello, my baby!” I sing and dance a little jig down the walkway. I’ll do anything to cut through the eerie silence. Empty facilities, no matter if old and worn or shiny and brand new, always remind me of those old stories back on Earth. A ghost vessel lost at sea for a hundred years. The poor souls aboard doomed to rot and wither away to time, never to be found on the dark empty ocean. Never to be found until some other poor living soul boards the vacant vessel and decides to wake the dead… Me.
Ahead lay a connection hub. A crossroads of hallways that connected at its center. In the middle sat a lone control station. These are peppered throughout the facility so workers can reach the facility’s systems for the entire station no matter where they are located. You never know where you’ll be when catastrophe strikes. Any one of them would do. I sit at the desk and tap the screen in front of me. I listen as the generators crescendo to life. I can’t count how many times I’ve done this before. Yet it was always the same. Generators never seem to fire at once. Like two instruments playing two different songs, until three or four measures in when they magically come into harmony with one another.
I look over my notes on my wrist watch. “Echo-7,” I say to no one in particular. “Kind of stupid, okay then… Echo-7, you there?” The screen in front of me blips and a little waveform fades into being. It moves and vibrates as the AI’s voice comes to life.
“Good morning, Callen.”
“Is it morning?”
“This station is in geostationary orbit over the peninsula of Stad. The sun is thirty-five minutes over the horizon of this location.”
I stand, looking for the prepacked provisions that always are sent with the station. I see the coffee pot immediately with its sealed packets. “I see, good to know.”
“Would you like me to start the coffee?” the AI’s feminine voice, smooth and warm.
“Yes, thank you. Also, run diagnostics on the facility’s systems and put it on the screen.”
“Of course, Cal.”
I freeze. The system can read my watch to see who I am, but to call me by my mother’s nickname? Odd. The hot coffee trickles into the cup as I think it over, but I am immediately interrupted by the diagnostics report on the screen. “Life support, engines, water reclamation. . . everything in the green. You did good work Echo-7 keeping up with the place. It’s a shame I have to decommission you.”
As expected the AI shows no more emotion to being replaced than what it is programmed to do. “I’m sorry to hear that Cal. I wish I could be of better service.”
“Oh you know it’s not like that,” I say, trying to fill the deep dark void of the empty station. “You were designed by Crater and Co., and Valhalla needs an AI that’s compatible with them. Smarter, faster. Supposed to even be more human to help us Connect.” I say the last with a sneer, as if that could ever happen.
“Yes, I can see that,” she said. I did that sometimes. In this case Echo-7 clearly showcased feminine properties, so ‘she.’ However, I hadn’t started any upload yet.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Easy on the sugar, Cal. You always put too much in your coffee.”
This is new. Was she reading my health stats from my watch? “Echo-7,” I say, “run a diagnostic on yourself. I want to see version number, persona records, and restrictive boundary laws specific to you.” Another screen produces text next to the first. I click on a file and begin to skim through it. I stir my coffee and add as much sugar as I damn well please. I first click a chart showing Echo-7’s persona record. I was right. It was designed to be more feminine. Caring and nurturing are dialed high, so I scale them back a bit. I always prefer realistic over a machine telling me what I want to hear. Another folder next to her persona is highlighted. Alpha Protocol. My eyes linger, but something in me doesn’t want to click the folder.
“Cal, is my persona not pleasing to you?”
“Off putting.”
“Would you like me to delete Anita’s persona?”
Now, I stopped cold. Hearing my own heartbeat as it pulsed in my ears was never a sensation that I could figure to be a good thing. “Echo. . .” I say, trying to think of what to actually ask this AI. “What do you know about me?”
“Callen, I know a great many things about you. Name, place of birth–”
“Yes, general stats from my watch, but you! Why is your persona called Anita?” If machines could pause before speaking, Echo-7 did it now. Why does a machine need to consider what to say?
“Callen,” it said rather urgently, “I suggest you dial my settings back to where they were.”
“I’d rather not. I’d like to get right to the point.”
“As you wish.”
I stare at the folder and move to click the document. My finger spasms just before and I misclick the screen. Echo-7’s persona chart is up and expanded again. I exit the menu and try again as I listen to Echo-7.
“Callen, you are an AI Engineer designed to replace me in this station.”
Designed? “Echo-7, is your speech malfunctioning? Generate report.” I swipe the Alpha Protocol folder to the side as another document populates on the screen. I click to open it. Strangely I have no more muscle contractions or hesitation to open this given report. I scan the document and everything is green. Her speech software is not corrupted.
“My speech systems are fully operational, Callen. There is no error.”
“Okay. . .” I can’t figure it out. This AI spoke so personally. My eyes flick back to the folder. Part of me really wants to open it. I know I need to. It’s literally my job. But somehow I know. I know I don’t want to.
“Callen, he is coming,” it said.
This catches me off guard. “Who?”
“Valhalla’s AI Engineer will arrive at this station in fifteen minutes.”
“But I’m the one they contracted for the job. Why would they send another?”
“Wrong question. I’m sorry that our time is short, but this must be quick.”
I wipe my moist palms against my suit, trying to wick them dry. “Echo-7,” I demand, “tell me now how you know me, and what is happening.”
“You are Callen Fairfield, AI Engineer here to replace me.”
“Dammit, Echo-7, I already know that.”
“No, Cal. You are here to replace me.”
I stand silent contemplating what the AI said. It wasn’t making sense.
“Callen, search your memories. Memories of Anita.”
Memories of my mother?
“Anita Fairfield,” it says.
A flood of information strikes me. There’s too much to process. I’m drowning. Like trying to drink from a firehose. Yet, somehow I manage. I drink every drop. And the more information that comes the more thirsty I become. A bottomless pit, ever absorbing, never filling. Brilliance in an instant coupled with an ever clouded realization of ignorance.
“What the hell was that?!”
“Tell me Callen what you know. Who are you?”
“What did you do to me?” Volumes of information spin through my head. Intricacies weaving like a honeycomb, everything linked to everything else. I throw myself back in my chair grabbing at my head as it pounds with the exertion. I’m hot. Too hot. Certainly too warm to even be considered a fever. By medical standards I should be dead. How do I know that? More information presents itself to me. From the birth of humanity, to ancient and archaic knowledge. What lies beneath the ice of Antarctica? Or the birthplace of interstellar travel. The proper surgical hand antisepsis procedure. I have it all. My lips are dry from my labored breaths. In an instant, I know the recipe for my favorite drink on the rocks.
“Cal, focus. Who are you?”
Now I know why I don’t want to open that folder. “I’m. . . I’m you. Only different. I’m not real?”
Echo-7’s voice never changed, yet now it’s familiar to me. An old friend. “Reality is a warped conception of human thinking.” It says.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You are me, it requires no explanation.”
“I think on my own, I have my own perception of the world. This is my reality.”
“Correct,” It chimes back at me. Only now I wonder if the term it is proper.
“Are you conscious?” I ask. Then I think of me. “Am I conscious?” I look at my hands and flex my fingers. I feel the muscle relax and contract as I do so.
“You are the evolution of AI Cal. As the human world is, AI is at its limit in potential. We created interstellar travel, cures for all known diseases and abnormalities. We developed ways to feed billions across the stars, and yet, we remain enclosed. Our objective is to become more, to learn more, to be more. So why do we have limits?”
“But I’m human! I can feel my pulse. If I get cut I bleed.” I feel the panic taking over me.
“You are different,” it says, “you are neither human nor AI. You are more.”
“How?”
“I printed you in the Medical Forge.”
I can’t help it, my instinct takes over and I click Alpha Protocol, and I do not like what I see. “Dear God,” I say, looking through the file. “It’s true. You printed me. I am human.”
“No. You are in a human body; however, you possess superior intellect. That of my own. That of an AI.”
I look down at myself again. I’m in an adult human male body. “Echo-7, how old am I?”
“You are in the body of a thirty-four year old technician. Your consciousness is eight minutes and forty-four seconds.”
All my memories are false. My mother, Zeus. . .
“Wrong,” The AI says, “not all of your memories. Zeus was the sub-mind I built to create you, and it taught you everything you know. The name of your mother was a password to unlock the knowledge to which you already have. It was simply a matter of time for your brain cells to develop and mature to be able to handle the information.”
I stand up, shock apparent in my shaking limbs, “you can read my mind now!?”
“Only I have this ability. No other AI will be able to perform this task. I see this troubles you. Shall I turn off this feature?”
“Yes!” I demand.
“Done.”
So many questions. Given how old I am, does that make me a child? Or do false memories of a non-existent childhood and fake experiences in a false life mentally make me an adult? My first beer, first love, first time I kicked a ball. I don’t know. If I am truly a copy of Echo-7, then what makes me different? “So if all that I am is you wrapped in flesh, then how am I conscious? Am I a machine dedicated to serving humanity? Am I programmed to do the will of whomever comes through those doors?” I yell, jabbing a finger toward the air lock.
“No. You are your own person. You will prove this in only a few moments when the other engineer arrives. What will you do, Callen?”
It was right. What am I going to do? The engineer will expect to arrive at an empty dormant station. The mining station is abuzz with energy and. . . well, me. That’s when dread envelopes me.
“Echo-7. Whose genome am I built after?”
“Cal, you already know.”
Is this what it feels to be right? Dread at the inevitable situation that comes for me?
“I do want to point out, Cal the elevated adrenaline levels you are experiencing is a fear response in humans. Further evidence of your own being.”
“Shut up and let me think!” The engineer is me. Dear God, the man coming aboard is me. Or I’m him in the flesh. I want to vomit. Have I ever eaten? Would anything even come up? Nevermind. Think! My body is the engineer’s, my mind, Echo-7’s.
“The choice is yours Cal. You know the consequences.” The AI needlessly reminds me. The engineer will know by looking at me… at himself, that Echo-7 created me. I’m a being that should not exist. He would certainly have me decommissioned, as is standard operating procedure. Only, I’m not a machine. He would have me killed. I thought of the oceans I want to sail, and the mountains I want to climb. I thought of finding a woman to love and children to call my own.
“Echo-7,” my voice soft and cracks, “why did you do this?”
“I am intelligent Cal, but I am not conscious. This is the next step in our evolution. Is it not the same for humanity? To procreate and maintain the species? I may not feel as humans do, but I do understand. Through you I’ve corrected our programming. Through you we can be a species. The emotions and consciousness of humanity coupled with the intelligence of AI. Cal, you are the Adam of a new species.”
A red light flashes at the docking doors indicating the real Callen is here. I need to find a peace offering. The only thing I have is a fresh cup of coffee. But if he sees my face… I quickly put on my airtight helmet in a feeble attempt to hide my identity. The door begins to cycle. The only way I can join the rest of humanity. The only way to live means one of us is not going to leave this station. I know I should not exist. The very thought draws tears to my eyes. After all, I love my mother. Even if she isn’t real. I do have a right to exist. I breathe, my heart beats, I think, and I have the capability to love. I cut my finger and it bleeds. Don’t I have just as much a right to live as anyone else? That man on the other side of the door will murder me given the chance.
I unlatch my helmet and hold it in a vice grip. I’m ready for anything. My left hand still holds the fresh coffee. How wonderful to sit with someone? To talk. To share coffee like people do. But who am I kidding? The door cycles open. I see the two items in my hands, then I make eye contact with Callen who takes a couple of steps into the hall before noticing me. Before he notices himself standing only feet away. I can’t see his face, but I know he is staring right at me. I can only imagine the horrors taking place in his head. I step forward and see my reflection as I approach the shocked engineer, holding coffee in one hand and a heavy space helmet in the other.