The Proteus Bridge Read online

  THE

  PROTEUS

  BRIDGE

  LEGENDS OF THE SENTIENCE WARS:

  BOOK 1

  BY JAMES S. AARON

  & M. D. COOPER

  Just in Time (JIT) & Beta Readers

  Jim Dean

  Marti Panikkar

  Timothy Van Oosterwyk Bruyn

  David Wilson

  Copyright © 2018 James S. Aaron & M. D. Cooper

  Aeon 14 is Copyright © 2018 M. D. Cooper

  Version 1.0.0

  Cover Art by Andrew Dobell

  Editing by Jen McDonnell, Bird’s Eye Books

  Aeon 14 & M. D. Cooper are registered trademarks of Michael Cooper

  All rights reserved

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  THE SOL SYSTEM CiRCA 2945

  MAPS

  PART I: CRASH AT PSION

  NUMBER GAMES

  WAKE UP

  HATE HATE HATE

  ELECTRIC MOTHER

  PLANS

  FIRST INTERLUDE

  THE HANGOVER

  PART II: CRASH CRASH CRASH

  THE HUSTLE

  DREAMING OF PARROTS

  TEQUILA FINGERS

  GETTING SQUAT

  LIFE HACKING

  LOOSE ENDS

  ZURLI FOR VIGOR

  BEER BEER BEER

  HIGH SCORE

  CAGES AND CURTAINS

  CORGI POWER

  BRIKI LAND

  TO THE FUTURE

  SECOND INTERLUDE

  RULING NIGHT PARK

  PART III: MY ANDERSONIA

  NEWLYWEDS

  TINA TINA TINA

  NESTING

  WRAPPING THE RIBBON

  A FREE RIDE

  HARD TIMES

  BOOT CAMP

  PRACTICAL HOUSEKEEPING

  WARM WELCOMES

  BLOODY ANOMOLIES

  WOULDN’T IT BE NICE

  BEST LAID PLANS

  THIRD INTERLUDE

  PSION

  PART IV: THE INFO JUNGLE

  THE HOARDIE

  LBD

  GO DOG GO

  SIT DOG SIT

  SLEEPING BEAUTIES

  THE MESH

  SENTIENCE WAR

  HEART VS HEAD

  LAST INTERLUDE

  A GOOD PERCH

  AFTERWORD

  THE BOOKS OF AEON 14

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  FOREWORD

  Would you get a Link implanted if the only one you could afford came with Amazon Special Offers?

  On the last Aeon 14 Podcast, Michael and I were talking about dentistry in the year 3000. Michael figured you would already have reinforced teeth...but if you did lose a tooth, the autodoc would fix you right up with something like a seed that would easily grow a new tooth.

  Me, I argued that you would most likely find yourself in the middle of nowhere in the Jovian Combine with an outdated autodoc loaded with pirated software because you didn't pay your subscription fees, and even if you did get a tooth seed, you couldn't trust that it wasn't going to grow the wrong direction and lobotomize you.

  Keeping things polite, Michael suggested I was being a little dystopian.

  Well, okay. He’s right.

  I don't think of my world view as dystopian so much as accounting for Murphy and all the things that will go wrong if they can. Maybe it's my military background.

  But I’m aware of my problem, and I’m working around it. As Bob says, the glass is never half empty. The other half is atmosphere.

  I appreciate Michael's optimism and his overall excitement for a better future. His outlook helps temper the fact that I love to explore the dark side, which brings us to Cruithne Station.

  I'm not sure what it was about Cruithne that first fascinated me when Tanis visited in Outsystem. I was intrigued by the idea of a moonlet caught between Earth and Mars making the perfect spot for smuggling, right alongside corporate headquarters and a TSF Outpost. A future Casablanca. To me, that's just a recipe for a great time, even if no one knows how to pronounce it at first. (Cruithne is a real place, by the way.)

  It’s Croon-ya.

  With Michael's foundation, it was easy to imagine the world of Ngoba Starl and Fugia Wong, two orphans who grew up in the hard sectors of Cruithne Station, and through the choices and sacrifices they make, find themselves playing a huge role in the Sentence Wars: Origins. Not long after, Ngoba discovered Crash, a Grey Parrot who learns the world is much bigger than he ever knew.

  The stories in this book first began as novellas for the Pew Pew! Anthologies. That means the tone is a bit lighter than what you'll find in the rest of the Sentience Wars. A lot of that is thanks to Ngoba's view of the world, where he's learned that if you can't laugh you'll probably end up crying—or dead. And Fugia Wong's dry sense of humor gets its start from outsmarting gangsters, while learning that humans are the weakest part of any security system.

  This book allowed me to expand material that didn't make it into the Sentience Wars: Origins, from Crash the Parrot's backstory, a visit to the Anderson Collective on Ceres' Insi Ring, to a little more Hari Jickson and everybody's favorite henchman, Karcher.

  Because these stories weren't conceived as a novel, there's a bit of time-jumping (I promise there are no flashbacks. I think.) I'm going to hang onto the gaps in the timeline as placeholders for future adventures. Somehow, I don't feel quite done with these characters, even though we'll need to keep moving forward once we leave 2850 behind.

  As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you have a great time.

  James S. Aaron

  Eugene, 2018

  THE SOL SYSTEM CiRCA 2945

  Before the Sol Space Federation and the days of Tanis serving in the Terran Space Force, the Sol System was a far wilder place.

  No central government sat overtop the many planets and groups of asteroids and habitats—though the SolGov assembly tried to maintain some order.

  Many of the great megastructures had been built, such as High Terra and Mars 1, but many others had not. Most importantly, there are few sentient AIs, and those who do exist are unwelcome, and often illegal.

  In a future without faster-than-light travel, teleportation, artificial gravity, or advanced shielding, a ship in space is just one small collision away from destruction.

  This is the Sol System we find ourselves in at the close of the third millennia, and the dawn of the age of AI.

  MAPS

  Also available at www.aeon14.com/maps

  PART I:

  CRASH AT PSION

  NUMBER GAMES

  STELLAR DATE: 04.15.2945 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: TMS Hesperia Nevada

  REGION: Terran Hegemony, (Hohmann Transfer) Point 364, InnerSol

  The beakless parrots were always funny. Crash the Grey Parrot felt sorry for them, really. They never made an effort to preen or shout for joy, burdened as they were with boring white plumage.

  He sorted their trays of cubes and repeated their phrases, observing with pleasure as they smiled with surprise or gave an overly serious nod throughout his display. They talked to him all the time, which made him wonder why they seemed to believe he didn’t understand. He would have known their names if they had ever introduced themselves.

  “Now, Crash,” the female one with curly black hair said. “Today I’m going to say phrases and I want you to repeat them back to me.”

  “Repeat them back,” he answered, bobbing his head.

  “Yes, repeat them back.”

  “Why? Why?” he would ask, knowing they loved it when he asked questions.

  “It’s a test to see how smart you are.”

  “Crash is very smart,” he ofte
n told her. “Crash is very smart. Crash is very pretty, too. Too!”

  That would earn him a smile.

  He had been born in their white place, and he understood more than they seemed to know—based on their questions, anyway. He understood their language and could read most of their words, probably as competently as any of them. Like generations of Grey Parrots before him, he understood himself as a person or conscious being, with feelings and thoughts, experiencing a strange and interesting world. He remembered the various beakless parrots by the shape of their bodies and the color of their eyes. He loved to ask, “Why?” a question that had amazed researchers since the first Grey Parrot asked it back in the twentieth century. What the humans seemed obsessed with answering, however, when asked his question, was how.

  They often discussed the differences between grey parrots and other birds, how they had developed advanced cognitive abilities that differed greatly from primates, and from some perspectives, offered a unique view on consciousness.

  He understood words like ‘EXIT’ over the doors into the aviary where he lived with the other two parrots, Testa and Doomie. There were ravens in a nearby room, beyond the ‘EXIT’ door. Crash heard them several times a day, cawing at each other.

  Every day followed the same pattern. Beakless parrots in blue plumage came around first, filling the feed trays with seeds and dried insects, cleaning the floors and walls where droppings had splattered. After that, the researchers came in. There was the curly-haired woman, a man with a pink, hairless head, and an older woman with grey hair almost the same color as Crash’s feathers.

  Doomie often hid in the highest branches of their tree when the researchers came in. Testa approached, depending on her mood, while Crash loved to squawk his joy call and flap his wings at them, shouting, “Good morning, I love you! Good morning, I love you!” At night, he called, “Good night! I love you!” which often made the researchers smile, pleasing him.

  The beakless ones usually moved like they were carrying invisible weights. They sighed heavily, checked data tablets as they measured how much food the three parrots had eaten, how much water they consumed and anything unusual in the droppings noted by the cleaners. Crash loved hopping from branch to branch, trying to get them to look up at him.

  There were other words in the room that he could read, from ‘LOCK AT ALL TIMES’ to ‘BIO-HAZARD’, and a word that he hadn’t seen anywhere else, but seemed important because it was written in different letters than all the others: ‘PSION LABORATORIES’.

  The days had been the same for as long as Crash could remember, following similar patterns with similar tests and rewards. He learned new words, learned what made the researchers angry or pleased, and found new ways to play with Doomie and Testa.

  On one morning, however, something different happened. When the beakless parrot who cleaned their white room opened the exit door, a black-winged raven shot through the opening.

  The raven flapped a frantic circuit of the room, weaving among the spread branches of the tree, and seemed to realize it was trapped. It cawed angrily and perched on the highest branch, not far from Doomie.

  The custodian had lost sight of the raven and stood near the tree trunk, squinting up into the branches. Doomie was clacking angrily, clearly agitated. Crash flew to a higher branch to get a better look, worried that Doomie might attack the other bird. While it was true the raven was smaller, he didn’t believe that Doomie would win in a fight against a raven.

  Communication with the beakless parrots was different than communication among his fellow parrots. He simply knew what Doomie and Testa were feeling and thinking, as opposed to interpreting what the beakless parrots wanted through their words. Words were abstractions for something else that wasn’t often clear. He could read their emotions, scents and body language much more clearly, despite their insistence on using sounds and symbols.

  As Crash approached the raven, he saw it was just as angry as Doomie, shifting from claw to claw and bobbing its head. Its long black beak opened and closed in a choking motion. The raven’s black eye rolled, seemed to fix on Crash as he hopped to a nearer branch, and then shifted elsewhere, like it had little control over itself.

  It was only when he was on the same high branch that Crash saw the silver thread dangling from the back of the raven’s head. The rough feathers were shiny with blood, and the silver thing swung around as the raven moved. It wasn’t a worm or a snake biting the back of the raven’s head. It was something that went inside its skull. The silver thread was something the researchers had made. Crash understood that immediately.

  Making cooing noises, Crash lowered his head and spread his wings slightly in a reassuring pose. Slowly, he side-stepped down the branch, letting the raven see each move. On the other side of the raven, Doomie clacked and complained, bobbing his head, staring with one yellow eye and then the other. Crash didn’t have time to waste on soothing Doomie. He wanted to help the raven.

  He had nearly reached the shivering bird when a grey shape swooped in from his left side. It was Testa with her claws spread. She landed heavily on the raven’s back and bit the silver thread with the end of her beak. Whipping her head from side to side, she yanked the thread from the raven’s skull.

  The raven spasmed, its beak opening once as it shoved its head forward. The thread came free with a blob of bloody flesh at one end, spraying the dry tree branch with red droplets. The raven made a choking sound and fell forward, forcing Testa to leap off its body, flapping her wings quickly.

  Doomie, Crash and Testa stood next to each other on the branch, watching the raven’s limp body hit several branches on the way down, wings spread, before it landed on the white floor near the custodian, like a puddle of black paint. Testa turned her head, letting the silver thread dangle. Crash got a good look at its metal length before she released it to fall on the raven.

  The beakless custodian waved his arms angrily, talking to someone Crash couldn’t see. He shouted, “These damn birds!” and “It’s not my fault!”

  Eventually he let his arms drop, and squinted up into the branches of the dead tree. Crash looked down at him, feeling the waves of anger and now fear coming off the beakless parrot. He didn’t know what was making the custodian so worried until later, when the room was full of researchers who poked at the dead raven, and collected the silver thread Testa had pulled from the back of its head, placing it in a plas box.

  There were no tests that day. The next day, Crash and Testa sorted multicolored cubes in the morning. When the three of them hopped down to the feeding trough to pick at seeds, one of the beakless researchers shot Doomie with a dart.

  Crash had seen the researchers wearing the weapons for years but never seen one used. He blinked at Testa, and they both looked at Doomie as he wobbled from side to side, and then fell off the perch.

  Testa squawked angrily, flapping her wings. She launched into the air, screeching a series of angry words in the beakless language. “Fuck you fuckers fuck you fuck fuck!”

  The curly-haired researcher, who Crash had always thought of as their friend, shot Testa as well. She crumpled into a ball of feathers and fell to the aviary floor.

  Before they could do the same to him, Crash shot to the highest branch of the dead tree and sidled close to the trunk, hiding himself from sight.

  For a long time, he thought they would leave him alone. Then a researcher he had never seen before came through the door from the raven aviary holding a long tube in both hands. He raised it to his eye, and it made a popping sound. Crash felt a prick in his chest feathers, a spinning sensation filled his head, and the world went black.

  WAKE UP

  STELLAR DATE: 04.18.2945 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: TMS Hesperia Nevada

  REGION: Terran Hegemony, (Hohmann Transfer) Point 364, InnerSol

  Crash woke in a fuzzy world that slowly turned white. He made out the branches of the dead tree snaking in the air. He was still in the aviary…though he had the sense
he had been somewhere else and then brought back. He felt as though time had passed. He was lying on his side, which he didn’t like. Flapping his wings, he snapped upright, then rose higher, quickly landing on the closest branch. His wings were sore and he was tired all over. There was a pressure and cold-sensation in the back of his head. He stretched his neck and made a complaining clacking sound.

  At first it seemed that he was alone in the aviary, until he saw Doomie and Testa perched above him. Both were huddled in their feathers, eyes hidden. Normally they would have perked awake at his angry display.

  The pain in the back of his head dulled as he hopped from branch to branch. He was tired, but the fatigue left his muscles the more he moved. His claws gripped and released the dry wood. When he reached the branch closest to Testa, he looked back at the doorway to the raven aviary, taking in the familiar sight of the Exit sign.

  He paused. Something had changed.

  The symbols made sense to him as an idea, as they always had. ‘Exit’ meant to leave, which the beakless parrots were always doing, but there was more to it.

  They aren’t beakless parrots, he realized. They’re humans. They’re different.

  Vertigo pulled at Crash’s head. He grabbed at the branch with his feet, spreading his wings to steady himself. For a few heartbeats, he struggled to stay upright. He had never fallen off a branch.

  His mind whirled with new ideas. They aren’t parrots. They aren’t like me or Doomie and Testa. They don’t see the world the same way. They don’t want the same things.

  They aren’t family.

  Doomie and Testa weren’t family, either, but they were the same as him. He understood.

  Crash clacked his beak in frustration. The understanding wasn’t something comfortable to him. It was foreign. The awareness flooding his thoughts wasn’t what he had always known. It was human.