When Aki saw Raul’s eyes show gratitude, she had a feeling that all he had wanted was for someone to see the value of his work.
“You dream of working there.”
“I would like to. When I created Natalia, I had no interest in their bureaucracy and their oligopolistic compromising and politicking. When I started confronting how to communicate with Natalia though, I realized that the ETICC and I were trying to jump the same hurdles, even if they get stuck with much longer pieces of red tape. I would love to use their computers for Natalia.”
“I think they noticed that. You plan on continuing at Cal, getting your master’s here, or a PhD?”
“Absolutely, I just hope they don’t shaft me for being overzealous.”
“I will be rooting for you. From a distance that is—don’t think that I will be pulling any strings for you because I won’t. You have to earn it,” Aki said.
On her way out, Aki took one last look at Natalia. Aki was unable to tell if there was a change in Natalia’s monitor displays. An intelligent entity that has no language…could such a mind exist? Is she as concerned about her existence as we have been, is she as driven to preserve herself?
“Why did you name her Natalia?”
“A girl I loved in high school who didn’t love me back. Her parents named her after the Van Morrison song.”
Aki looked along the routing wires and found the circuit breaker that was next to the power unit and the processor. She ran up to the breaker and placed her finger on the switch. Aki looked at the camera. “Natalia? How close are you to understanding what this means? Have you learned that you have to answer me or you will end up in the scrap heap? How close are you to understanding that we will turn you off if you do not learn how to communicate?”
Raul grabbed Aki’s wrist. “Stop taunting her.”
They watched the monitors and nothing changed.
“She can’t relate to humans. She doesn’t understand the relationship between you, that switch, and the power supply. Threatening her doesn’t do anything that could possibly allow her to make the leap to communication with us.”
“I was trying to provoke a response,” Aki said. “Not that different from what you did at the ETICC, really.”
Raul licked his lips. His face was sweaty. “I didn’t mean to scare anyone. You’re trying to provoke a response from me, not from her. You’re the real loose cannon. I’m more into precision missile homing.”
“Interesting comment from a cracker. An organization like the UNSDF will never understand your ideas, let alone your argument for your actions, unless you approach them in a way that the UNSDF can comprehend,” Aki said as she extracted her wrist from Raul’s grip. “Raul, a piece of advice. I have not gotten to where I am by pushing every agenda that mattered to me. I have stayed true to my long-term goals, but I have had to play roles and I have had to make compromises. It is something you should try to learn. Otherwise intelligence just turns into a curse, especially in a world as damaged as ours.”
“I never thought a Nobel Prize winner would be such a player of games. You play nice with everyone but me, the one guy you can kick around, is that it?”
Aki exhaled and leaned against the doorway. “What other people think of me is none of my business. I do the best I can. I get angry and I get crazy, just like anyone, but I remember the day I saw the tower on Mercury, the day the whole world changed forever. I do the best I can to stay true to who I was back then—a young girl who just wanted to know.”
It dawned on Aki that she was more honest with Raul than with people she had worked with for years. Her deepest feelings would never surface in the most heated conversations with Director Riggins or Jill Elsevier. She almost told Raul how guilty she felt for what she had done to the braking system. She thought of how she could have opened up to Mark Ridley, but she had never really acted on the trust she felt for him. Mark Ridley sacrificed his life for her, and every living thing on the planet, but the Builders could not even be bothered to acknowledge humanity’s existence.
“We have communicated with the Builders, you know,” she started suddenly. “Well, at least once.”
“When? Does anyone know about it?”
“I destroyed their Ring. We know the Builders noticed. They may not have had an emotional reaction to the elimination of their braking mechanism, and they may not have had a response that we will be able to interpret, but they had to have heard it. The message was received, even if it was not processed.”
“Has the ETICC considered that unanswered is different than unheard?”
“Not really.” Aki wondered if the Builders really did understand that this solar system was not devoid of life. The very fact that their lasers were not arriving was a form of information no different from an encoded message being sent at the speed of light. “To the Builders, the lasers being gone and an encoded message from the ETICC being sent at light speed might both seem trivial or like natural phenomena. The subjectivity of language is more integral to the transmission than any of us had realized.”
Raul stared silently at Natalia’s monitors for a long moment before he spoke. “I guess you’re right. You started the dialogue in the worst possible way. If no one knew and no one would judge you, if there was no chance that it could potentially impede your ability to see the stars up close again, what would you do?”
“I am not sure there is anything I can do. How can I make it up to them? Maybe they are not responding out of spite for what I did. Maybe it is hard to believe a message of peace from the same beings who just damned you to an eternity of drifting through space?”
Raul folded his arms again. “It’s like with Natalia, except that you really did flip the breaker.”
“I refuse to think of it as killing them until my action actually causes their deaths. I know I am splitting hairs between dooming them and murder…Who knew that some quick thinking and some soldering would feel like this?” Aki could not continue. What she had done was different than removing a computer’s circuit boards, and she was often ashamed of her decision. Raul’s lack of professional demeanor and disheveled home made the perfect excuse for her to be honest. No reporter, researcher, or governmental hack would believe him if he tried to quote her.
“I guess you have to put them back,” Raul said.
“Put them back?”
“Don’t let the grief machine call the shots. Aki Shiraishi, you have to make amends if you want to make up with the Builders. And there’s only one way to put things back the way they were before.”
CHAPTER 2: THE UNITED NATIONS SPACE DEFENSE FORCE
ACT I: APRIL 22, 2024
“I’M CERTAIN IT’S safe, Commander.”
“No. You need to wait two more hours,” Alan Kindersley said. He was a man of policy, adhering to schedules and sticking to rules made him who he was.
Molly Durden was familiar with Commander Kindersley’s management style and understood how he led. She knew better than to state her case a second time. She was anxious enough that she left her cocoon, entered the airlock module, and donned her space suit. Then she spent over an hour inspecting her supplies and equipment. When exactly six hours had passed since the sampler had returned, the Commander gave the order for the EVA.
“Roger that. Heading out, Commander.” Molly left the airlock and aimed herself at the ship’s bow.
Even though Aki had spent four months in space, she was still taken aback by this sight every time she saw it, even though she was merely watching a monitor screen’s live feed from Molly’s suit. The ship was gravitationally held in place at the second Lagrange point on the opposite side of Mercury from the sun. At this point, the sun appeared just slightly larger than the apparent diameter of the planet, producing a swirling ring of light. The inner side of the halo of light blazed in a bloody shade of red as it passed through Mercury’s atmosphere—most of it a gaseous artifact of waste produced by the Builders’ constructions. The optical effect was brilliant; an amalgamation of every sunrise and sunset that could be seen from the planet’s surface.