I told myself they were alive, I just hadn’t gotten their property back, which had actually not been part of the job they hired me for. It didn’t help.
I got off the tube on the far end of its circuit. This was a warren of tunnels that according to the map led off to various private tube accesses for the distant mining pits. Only a few humans got off the tube here, all heading immediately down the tunnel for the nearest tube interchange. I went the other direction.
I spent the next hour hacking cameras and security barriers, slipping in and out of half-completed tunnels, many with warning markers for air quality. Finally I located one that showed evidence of past use as a mining access. It was big enough for the largest hauler bots, and the cameras and lights were down. As I went along it, climbing over rock and metal debris, I felt the public feed drop out.
I stopped and checked ART’s comm, but it was only picking up static. I didn’t think it was any deliberate attempt to block my connection to the rest of the installation; I’d experienced that type of outage before and this felt different. I think this tunnel was so deep below the surface that the comm and the feed needed powered relays to get out, and those weren’t functioning anymore. Something ahead still had power, because my feed was picking up intermittent signals, all automated warnings. I kept going.
I had to open another security barrier, but past it found a cargo tube access and managed to push the sliding door open. A small passenger tube was still there. It hadn’t been used in a long time, long enough for the water and scattered trash on the carpet to combine and grow something squishy. I made my way up to the front compartment where the manual emergency controls were. There was still power in the batteries, though not much. It had been left here, forgotten, slowly dying in the darkness as the hours ticked away.
Not that I was feeling morbid, or anything.
I checked to make sure there was no active security attached to it, then got it started. It groaned into life, lifted off the ground, and started down the tunnel into darkness, following its last programmed route. I sat down on the bench to wait.
Finally the tube’s scan picked up a blockage ahead and threw an alarm code. I had five episodes of different drama series, two comedies, a book about the history of the exploration of alien remnants in the Corporation Rim, and a multi-part art competition from Belal Tertiary Eleven queued and paused, but I was actually watching episode 206 of Sanctuary Moon, which I’d already seen twenty-seven times. Yes, I was a little nervous. When the tube started to slow, I sat up.
The lights shone on a line of metal barricades. Glowing markers had been sprayed on the material, sending out bursts of warning into my feed. Radiation hazard, falling rock hazard, toxic biological hazard. I got the emergency lock to unseal for me and jumped down to the gritty ground. I was scanning for energy signatures and I adjusted my eyesight to be able to see past the bright marker paint. There was a gap three meters along, a darker patch against the metal. It was small but I didn’t have to pop any joints to wriggle through.
I walked down the tunnel to the platform that had been part of the passenger tube access. Farther down there was a set of ten-meter-high doors, big enough for vehicles and the largest hauler bots to maneuver through and for the loads of raw mineral to come out. The passenger access had a cargo unloading rack still extended, and I used it to swing up to the high platform. Everything was covered with a layer of damp dust, which showed no recent tracks. The sealed crates of a supply delivery, with the logos of various contractors stamped on the boxes, still stood stacked on the platform. A broken breather mask lay beside it. My human parts were experiencing a cold prickling that wasn’t comfortable. This place was creepy. I reminded myself that the terrible thing that had most likely happened here was me.
Somehow that didn’t help.
There wasn’t enough power to move the doors, but the manual release for the passenger access lock still worked. There was no powered light in the corridor either, but the walls were streaked with light-emitting markers, meant to guide everyone out in the event of a catastrophic failure. Some had already failed with age, others were fading. The lack of any feed activity except from the warning paint was vaguely disturbing; I kept thinking of the DeltFall habitat and I was glad I had had ART make the adjustment to my data port.
I followed the corridor into the installation’s central hub. It was a large domed area, dark except for the fading markers on the ground. There were no human remains, of course, but debris was scattered around, tools, broken slivers of plastic, a chunk of hauler bot arm. Openings to corridors, like dark caves, branched off in all directions. I had no sense of having been here before, no sense of familiarity. I identified the passages that led toward the mine pit, then the corridors that went toward the quarters and offices. Branching off from that was the equipment storage.
The emergency power failure releases for the sealed doors had unlocked everything, but whoever had cleaned up afterward had left them shut, and I had to shove each one open. Past the maintenance stations for the hauler bots, I found the security ready room. I stepped in and froze. In the dimness, among the empty weapon storage boxes and the missing floor panels where the recycler had stood, there were familiar shapes. The cubicles were still here.
There were ten of them lined up against the far wall, big smooth white boxes, the dim marker light gleaming off the scuffed surfaces. I didn’t know why my performance reliability was dropping, why it was so hard to move. Then I realized it was because I thought the others were still in there.
It was a completely irrational thought that would have confirmed ART’s bad opinion of the mental abilities of constructs. They wouldn’t leave SecUnits here. We were too expensive, too dangerous to abandon. If I wasn’t locked inside one of these cubicles, the organic part of my brain dreaming, the rest helpless and inert, then the others weren’t here.
It was still hard to make myself cross the room and open the first door.
The plastic bed inside was empty, the power long cut off. I opened each one, but it was the same.
I stepped back from the last one. I wanted to bury my face in my hands, sink down to the floor, and slip into my media, but I didn’t. After twelve long seconds, the intense feeling subsided.
I don’t even know why I’d come in here. I needed to look for data storage, records left behind. I checked the weapons lockers to make sure there was nothing handy, like a package of drones, but they were empty. A firefight had left burn scars on the wall and there was a small crater impact from an explosive projectile next to one of the cubicles. Then I went back toward the offices.
I found the installation control center. Broken display surfaces were everywhere, chairs overturned, interfaces shattered on the floor, and a plastic cup still sat on a console, undisturbed, waiting for someone to pick it up again. Humans can’t work completely in the feed with multiple inputs the way I can, and bots like ART can. Some augmented humans have implanted interfaces that allow it, but not all humans want lots of things inserted into their brains, go figure. So they need these surfaces to project displays for group work. And the external data storage should be tied in here somewhere.
I picked a station, set a chair upright, and got out the small toolkit I had borrowed from ART’s crew storage and brought along in the large side pocket of my pants. (Armor doesn’t have pockets, so score one for ordinary human clothing.) I needed a power source to get the station operable again, but fortunately I had me.