“Unknown. The injections have been administered.”
I thought about that. What injections? I decided the ship’s answer was good enough for now. I would find out the rest when the job was done. The fact the ship had said unknown concerned me, however. The outcome was in doubt. I shook my head and rubbed my temples.
“Ship—what should I call you?”
“How do you wish to address us?”
I thought of a dozen expletives. Asshole came to mind, for example. For the first time since I’d awakened, a grim smile twitched on my face and quickly died.
“I’m going to name you Alamo,” I said, “because I intend to never forget you.”
“Rename complete.”
I snorted. “Okay Alamo, let’s try something easy. Turn on a view screen or something so I can see what’s going on below us.”
A portal melted in the middle of the bridge floor. It was circular and perhaps ten feet in diameter. The second it began to open, the air in the room began screaming out of it. A fantastic wave of cold struck me. Could we be in space? Had I just killed myself?
“Close it! Close it up again!” My breath came in gasps. I was on the floor and being sucked across it toward the opening.
The hole vanished and the room rapidly repressurized. How high up were we? I didn’t think I was in open space, as I was sure we would not have survived that. Besides, I wasn’t weightless. Very high up, but still inside the atmosphere, then. Maybe miles up.
I found myself in a shivering ball on the floor of the ship. That had been a close one. I recalled my words: Turn on a view screen or something.... I was certain it was that or something part which had gotten me into trouble. One did not want to be vague with this vessel. Another hard lesson learned.
“Ship?” I said.
Nothing. Then I remembered the rename.
“Alamo, respond.”
“Responding.”
“Why did you open that portal in the floor?”
“Because the commander ordered it.”
I blinked and sat up against a wall. So, I was the ship’s commander. Had those centaurs been the old commanders?
“Alamo, return to California. Maintain an altitude of one mile.”
The ship shuddered to a stop.
“Secondary mission aborted.”
“What secondary mission?”
“The acquisition of new command personnel.”
“Have you been gathering people up all along in this ship while I’ve been sitting in here?”
“Yes.”
I huffed. “Have you been testing them, the way you tested me?”
“No. The testing sequence was not identical.”
I thought about that. I believed I had the answer. “So, now that I’m sitting in here, the aggression test or the leadership test would be the last one, right? The one you gave them when they reached the bridge? You would have given command of this ship to whoever won a fight to the death in this room?”
“Yes.”
“Stop that mission. Alamo, you will not continue to pick people up and test them. That mission has ended.”
“Schedule updated.”
I was more certain than ever that I was dealing with an artificial intelligence. Maybe there weren’t any aliens aboard for me to avenge myself on, only the ship itself, following some commands given to it long ago. I just hoped the ‘acquisition of command personnel’ mission didn’t pop back up again, like a program that kept reinstalling itself and trying to update itself no matter how many times you canceled it.
I had a horrible new thought then. “Alamo, do not drop out anyone else who is aboard. Leave them on this ship. I wish to talk to them.”
“All acquisition mission participants were released when the mission was aborted.”
My hands went to my face, rubbing. They crept up to my hair, where they tugged. I pulled my own hair until it hurt and I made a roaring sound.
“Released,” I said, my voice choking. “You mean you dropped them out of the ship?”
“Yes.”
I had just killed an unknown number of people. I thought about asking how many there were—who they were. But I stopped myself. It would not do my sanity any good to know the details.
When the ship shuddered again, my mind had partly recovered from the guilt of having made deadly mistakes. Command definitely came with the weight of responsibility on this ship. Since the Alamo had stopped, I figured we must be back over California. I wondered if the ship had plucked up Dave Mitters from his squad car and put him through few tests before I had him dropped into the upper atmosphere. He had stopped firing in a sudden fashion, and there had been no shouting afterward. Perhaps it had burnt him down with that green beam instead. One way or another, I felt sure the ship had killed him.
I tried to put all of that out of my mind. If I just talked to the ship and didn’t give it any new commands, I figured it probably wouldn’t kill anyone. If nothing else, I could stop it from causing more grief. At least, I hoped so.
“Alamo,” I said, trying to think clearly, to reason out the right approach. “Where is the ship’s crew? What were they trying to accomplish?”
“Excessive responses generated.”
I thought about that. I had to be more specific. “Besides myself and my children, are there any other humans currently onboard?”
“No.”
“Besides the four humans, are there other living beings onboard?”
The voice hesitated for several seconds. I’d never heard it do that before. “Answer unclear.”
Answer unclear? For some reason, the response caused a chill to go through me. What might cause it to be unsure? My mind jumped to strange conclusions. Were there some kind of zombie creatures aboard, or frozen beings, or robots that might be considered alive? Suddenly, I thought I had it.
“Alamo, you are aboard this vessel, do you consider yourself to be alive?”
“Unclear.”
I nodded to myself. I might have smiled, but I was in a grim mood, so my mouth formed a tight line instead. I had learned something. The ship was indeed artificially intelligent. Was a thing like that alive? Not in my book, but who knew how it thought about itself. I decided not to get into a pointless philosophical argument with the ship over this issue. I would skip administering the Turing Test. It really didn’t matter.
“Alamo, is this portion of the ship the bridge?”
Another hesitation. Were a vast number of recursive routines firing off in this thing’s mind causing the delay?
“This is the goal room for the command mission. It has capabilities the other chambers don’t have.”
I nodded. That made it the bridge. “Can I fly the ship from this room?”
“Yes.”
“Can I...” I tried to think of some other command function. “Can I communicate with other ships from this room?”
“Yes.”
I sucked in a breath. For the very first time, it occurred to me that there might be other ships like this one. Were they all over the Earth? It made my stomach flutter, as if I’d dropped off the high dive.
“How many ships like this one are there, Alamo?” I asked quietly.
“Unknown.”
Precision, I told myself. I had to ask for specifics. “How many ships like this one are within—ten miles of the Earth’s surface?”
“Seven hundred and forty-six.”
I put my hand over my mouth. This was an invasion. Up until now, I’d believed myself to be special, to be one of those people they put on TV who said they’d been abducted and probed by aliens. I had to take all those people out of the crazy zone in my mind now. They had been telling the truth all along.