“Three days.” She tilted her head and studied him in birdlike fashion. “Tell me about her.”
“Who?”
“Sarah Rosen. Your wife. She was the catalyst for your actions, right?”
He frowned. It suddenly occurred to him that Maria was a complete stranger. He had no idea what she wanted. Whose side she was on. “Sarah’s not to blame.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that. I simply meant that she was important to you. So important that you dared to cross time and space to return to her. I’d like to know more.”
He gazed at her, but didn’t see any judgment in her face. Only curiosity. He sighed as the tingling feeling of bittersweet memories surfaced.
“She wasn’t just important. Sarah was everything. My partner. My lover. My best friend. We met in college, both majoring in astrophysics. Everything just… clicked. I was never a social person, but when I met her…” A smile stretched across his face. “I just knew it was right. You know? The feeling in your gut, the pure instinctual intuition. It can’t be explained. It can’t be questioned. It just is.”
He looked at Maria. Her face was a mystery, revealing nothing of whether she understood or not. He wondered if she’d ever been in love. He imagined she must have. It seemed a terrible waste to be the sole occupant of a sleeping space station and never had the experience of love before.
“Why are you awake, Maria? What makes you so special?”
Her cheeks dimpled with her smile. “I’m awake because I’m working, Dr. Rosen. Why did you bring your wife with you on such a dangerous expedition?”
“She wouldn’t have it any other way.” Albert bit his lip, remembering the day they departed. Sarah with her hair pulled back, her natural beauty on full display. She had never thought much of the ‘makeup and heels life,’ as she put it. She was far more interested in pursuing theories and breaking boundaries. “She was the one who theorized the energy source we detected might be extraterrestrial. She insisted on being there to see if her calculations were correct.”
“And they were.”
“Yes.” His vision blurred as tears welled in his eyes. “More accurate than we imagined, and with devastating results. You couldn’t comprehend unless you were there. Unless you saw what we witnessed. A tear in the fabric of reality. A whirlpool of blazing light in an ocean of darkness. It was like an inverted black hole, beautiful and terrifying. And it tore the Gorgon apart.”
Maria laid a comforting hand on his arm. “Yet you survived.”
He shuddered. “The others died first. Crushed by the pressure when most of the ship collapsed. I was sequestered in the reinforced remainder with Sarah, but it was about to go as well. Water was streaming everywhere, and the sounds… like some metal beast dying in agony. It was terrifying. The only option was to deploy the armored emergency pod and pray for a rescue mission. I told Sarah to get inside. She tried, but the handle was stuck. She stepped back to let me try.”
His voice nearly broke.
Maria patted his hand. “Take your time. It’s okay.”
He drew a quavering breath. “There was nothing wrong with the handle. The door opened with ease. I didn’t understand. Not until she shoved me inside and locked it behind me.”
Their vessel crumpled around them like aluminum foil, and Sarah’s eyes stared from the depths of dark waters; her hair haloed around her face when she was torn away from him with irresistible force.
“I think she knew what would happen. She knew no rescue was coming. She sacrificed herself for me. So I could have a chance, however infinitesimal that chance was. That was Sarah. That was… love.”
Maria blinked her dark eyes. “It was love that took her away from you. And it was love that impelled you to try to come back.”
His head jerked. “You know.”
“Yes. Deis gave me the update.”
“You must hate me. For what I did. For what happened after.”
“I don’t hate you.”
He studied her face, trying to detect some hint of mockery, some crack in the veneer of her candor. She gazed back at him without flinching, giving him the disorienting feeling that her eyes were mirrors, revealing nothing except his own reflection.
Deis’ voice broke through Albert’s concentration. “Hate is not something that afflicts us here, Dr. Rosen. There is only knowledge. Your arrival has brought history full circle, explaining much that has otherwise been hypothesis.”
Albert gazed around the room. “You heard everything.”
“I have.”
“So you’re basically everywhere?”
“I am linked to every system in this station, allowing access everywhere, at all times. Aboard the Locus I am omnipresent, if you will.”
“Like God.”
“You seem to be confronting your spiritual side today. Not an unexpected reaction.”
“What about you? What does a cybernetic entity think of the metaphysical?”
“You might be surprised. I was created, after all. Therefore the idea of a master Creator makes perfect sense to me.”
“You’re kidding me.”
The door whisked open. Deis strode into the room in his robotic form and stood beside the bed with his hands clasped behind his back. “I do not ‘kid’, Dr. Rosen. Let me ask you this: what if I told you I came into existence not by design, but from a long and intricate chain of startlingly convenient happenstances. Would you be inclined to believe me?”
“No.”
“Nor am I convinced that you came into existence in such a fashion. I am, after all, created in your image.”
“Is that why you chose the name Deis? What is that short for? Deity?”
“An astute deduction, Dr. Rosen. Deis is, in fact, an amalgam of the word Deity and Deus. When I was first conceived, there was much debate on what to call me. In the end it came down to two choices: the Deity program, or Deus Ex Machina. In the end, my creators combined the two.”
“So you’re the god in the machine. Artificial intelligence.”
Deis raised a synthetic eyebrow. “Can intelligence be artificial? One either is or is not intelligent. The word artificial automatically implies fabrication when applied to sentience. I can assure you this is not the case.”
“So you were the one who made the decision.”
“Decision?”
“To put humanity on ice. Let me guess: your logical reasoning concluded we were too great a threat to our planet. The only option was to place us in suspended animation. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t just eradicate us completely.”
“Your assumptions harbor more distrust than merit, Dr. Rosen. But if you’re feeling up to it, I’d like for you to take a walk with me. There’s something you might want to see.”
Cyberspace.
It had evolved since Albert had last seen it. Before, it had always been presented as flowing streams of coded data, sequences of characters flowing across blue or greenlit digital screens.
Cybernetics had matured.
Albert and Deis stood in a rounded chamber, where the dim lighting complemented the marvel of glittering lights that hovered in the center of the room.
Points of light floated before him in intricate holographic detail, more like a galaxy than a computer program, if the billions of stars were replaced by endless caches of data. It glimmered as it revolved around its central core, appearing a macrocosm or a digital eye, depending on how Albert looked at it. It was at once fascinating and unnerving, because he knew it was far beyond his intellectual capacity. He felt like a Neanderthal staring at a television set, both astounded and stupefied beyond comprehension.