The Proteus Bridge Read online

  Crash swooped from side to side in the room, then shot through the open door on the far end. He followed the other ravens, understanding they were headed for the command section of the ship. Did they think they could pilot a space ship?

  Despite the human incursions in his mind, he understood that he was a parrot. He couldn’t operate human equipment.

  a voice said in his mind.

  Crash blinked and almost ran into a bulkhead. He perched for a second on a door handle, then launched into flight again.

  he asked, knowing the voice sounded nothing like Doomie.

  the voice said—a woman’s voice, he recognized: warm, strong, feminine…not human. The power in the voice sent chills through his body.

  she said.

  Crash asked.

  Shara said.

  ELECTRIC MOTHER

  STELLAR DATE: 05.09.2945 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: TMS Hesperia Nevada

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

  Shara was an AI and she had made them all.

  Not made them exactly, Crash understood eventually, although that was the easiest way for him to think about it. She was a hold-over from the days not long after the Future Generation Terraformers left Sol, when later companies building colony ships embraced multi-nodal systems designed to analyze star systems and develop, augment, manipulate—or do whatever else was necessary—to encourage humanity to thrive once terraforming was complete. An AI Mother Gaia.

  When those AIs proved sentient, they were killed.

  And when those later colony ships never left Sol, their assets were broken up and cast to the wind.

  Shara might have been a copy of that AI, a fork of the original program that had been stolen or sold, passed from corporation to corporation in the layers of their Intellectual Property, until she was eventually awakened by Psion Laboratories.

  This ship, Crash learned, was the TMS Hesperia Nevada—which he immediately knew was a type of butterfly, thanks to his Link—sitting in a transfer orbit between Venus and what used to be Mercury. The only other things around them were cargo drones and chewed bits of Mercury that had been pulled out by mining rigs.

  It took Shara’s explanation for Crash to understand that he had been living on a dark research site, a place kept secret from the rest of the world. His aviary, which it had never occurred to him to think wasn’t firmly attached to some kind of ground, was spinning around the axle of a ship fast enough to create the comfortable 1g—Earth normal—that allowed him to fly with ease.

  Once they left the aviaries, the spaces became cramped and tube-shaped, forming the normal bowels of a ship. He stopped trying to keep up with the cawing mass of ravens and paused on various bits of piping and metal boxes affixed along the bulkhead. Doing so allowed him to look through windows into various rooms. He struggled to make sense of what he saw, until the Link began fitting the world around him with definitions and explanations.

  He stared for a long time into a white room that he thought was a tiny aviary at first, but was lined with cabinets full of shallow shelves. Arranged in neat rows on the shelves were eggs.

  Shara explained.

 

 

  Crash finished.

  Shara sighed.

  A wave of frustration filled Crash. he asked.

 

 

  Shara said.

  Crash frowned, staring at the thousands of eggs bathed in the pale yellow light of the incubators. he asked.

 

  Crash said.

  She paused, sounding as though she was checking on something away from them.

  Crash said. He had never known their names. The pleasure he felt at answering a question he’d wondered about all his life quickly turned to sadness at the outcome.

  Shara said solemnly.

  Crash said.

  Shara said.

  As he shot down the ship’s corridor, it occurred to Crash that Shara was much more capable than him. She seemed to able to see everything that was happening in the ship and, moreso, knew what all of it meant. He was at her mercy.

  He didn’t like the thought. It made him feel like he was in some extended research test again.

  he asked.

  Shara said.

 

  the AI said.

  Crash’s Link had already flooded him with a background on AIs. He wasn’t certain that he grasped the concept completely. If Shara was a collection of manufactured parts that became conscious, was he any different? Were humans really any different? Consciousness seemed to be the deciding factor, not the biology, or hardware housing the mind.

  In just the short time since the Link had been implanted, he had learned that many human distinctions were matters of opinion rather than fact, and that humans seemed to often rely on their assumptions or suppositions rather than the facts about something. They wouldn’t change their mind if they expected a thing to act a certain way. It wasn’t a duck even if it looked like a duck and quacked like a duck and was made of biological components. It was artificial.

  It was a strange way of looking at the world. It seemed to waste a lot of time on determining hierarchies that were really just a way to maintain control. Humans loved their methods of control. He supposed that was the primate in them.

  Shara was as alien to him as something from outer space, but
he accepted that they were both trapped on the Hesperia Nevada, were able to communicate with each other, and seemed capable of cooperation. That was good enough for him.

  He still didn’t understand how a little grey parrot like him could stop a human crew, even with the help of a wildly squawking murder of ravens. But after everything that had happened in the aviary, after losing Doomie and Testa, Crash was ready to fight.

  PLANS

  STELLAR DATE: 06.01.2945 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: TMS Hesperia Nevada

  REGION: Terran Hegemony, Vicinity Cruithne, InnerSol

  Cruithne Station floated in the holodisplay, a misshapen asteroid covered in barnacle-like layers of human construction. A series of haphazard rings circled the asteroid, looking as if they had been started in various places by different people with wildly different design ideas, only to meet by accident, creating a foundation for even more people to add their own trash-like structures. How it didn’t all spin apart was a testament to generations of engineers.

  The space around the holographic asteroid fluttered with ships and shipping drones pulling freight from other craft in parking orbits. Three steady streams of traffic left the station, heading ultimately for Earth, Mars 1, and points in the Jovian Combine like the Cho and Europa, depending on Cruithne’s position in the Sol System.

  Crash turned his head from side to side, studying the glowing blue asteroid and its surrounding activity. Humans were so busy. He tried to imagine how many people he was looking at, if every icon represented a ship, and every ship had at least ten people. Some of them would have hundreds. And the station itself had to hold a million, at least.

  Several of the crows stood on the headrests of other chairs around the command deck, lights from the update displays reflected in their black eyes. Crash couldn’t speak directly to them but he could feel certain moods from the corvids, such as hunger, curiosity and humor. Most of their communication seemed to be jokes among themselves.

  By now, the Hesperia Nevada felt like an extension of Crash’s body. Shara had not been lying when she said he could fly the ship and she could not, but it had not been an easy transition.

  In general, he intuitively understood many aspects of the ship’s operation in four dimensions, but the opposing forces of lift and weight, thrust and drag did not translate to navigating in space. Orbital mechanics gradually made sense, after extensive Link research and assistance from the astrogation NSAI.

  Integrating all the new information with his instincts was where his evolved mind had worked best, and soon piloting became a joy. Not that there was much to be done once they had the course laid and the engines programmed.

  Still, he was flying the ship!

  Crash adjusted his claws on the shipsuit draped across the command seat. The suit had belonged to the captain of the Hesperia Nevada before Shara, Crash, and the ravens managed to convince them that every test animal on the ship was infected with a bio-engineered plague. Following Shara’s hacked safety commands, the crew had stripped out of their clothes and run naked for the escape shuttles, leaving a quarantined Hesperia Nevada behind.

  Shara asked.

  Crash bobbed his head.

  the AI said.

 

 

  Crash asked.

 

  The thought of other parrots made him sad for Doomie and Testa again, and all the other parrots in the incubators that would never be born. In the weeks since the crew had left, Crash had been teaching himself how to divide his thoughts among the various streams in his mind. He had to control the constant flood of input from the Link, while also learning what to feel and think about his own new situation. By sorting his thoughts, he was able to prioritize his attention between what he had already felt and experienced, the current moment, and what might come.

  Crash had never worried about the future before.

  His life had always been a warm past and a pleasant present, an ongoing game of pleasing the researchers and conquering their challenges.

  Hidden among the data from the Link was a whole database entry on Grey Parrots. He found it while trying to learn more about what the humans had been hoping to accomplish on Hesperia Nevada.

  It felt strange to even think of them as non-parrots now. Before, everyone had been some form of parrot to him, of the same family. The world seemed more dangerous now that he understood they were separate, different, and with confusing goals.

  While he had been interested to learn about differing levels of ‘intelligence’ and the thousand-year debates around consciousness, he suffered a deep sadness to learn what humans had been doing to his kind for millennia. While grey parrots were highly prized as pets, they were also abused and even eaten as delicacies in some places where any meat was invaluable. But he also understood that humans visited the same horrors on each other, so what they had perpetrated on his kind wasn’t exactly special in its evil. It was just the way the world worked. But his kind had singled themselves out with their intelligence.

  He also knew there had to be others like him, since the work of the Hesperia Nevada had been to develop a new kind of Link that would allow humans to carry Sentient AIs in their minds. What if parrots don’t want anyone else in their minds? Did Testa? Did anyone ask her?

  The step to anger was still slightly beyond Crash’s dawning understanding. He sorted the ideas flooding his mind as he had arranged the colored cubes and number sequences that the researchers had placed in front of him, taking joy in the task rather than searching for motives. When he asked, “Why?” it was to feel their questions, to connect with them, to help.

  Watching the glowing asteroid, Crash wondered how someone as small as him could every really help in such a big world. What if the world didn’t want his help? He was just a resource to chew up in the pursuit of others’ goals.

  Shara said.

 

 

  he said.

  He felt her smile in his mind.

 

  The Link explained both Neptune’s largest moon and a mythical demigod of changing knowledge. He didn’t understand which she meant to reference.

  Before he could ask, a warning system beeped on the control console. All the ravens in the command deck turned to inspect the source of the sound, which appeared to be Crash’s display, and started cawing and flapping their wings.

  Crash asked.

  Shara made an angry sound and silenced the alarm. The ravens’ caws took another few seconds to subside.

 

 

  Shara said.

  Crash said. He didn’t like sounding stupid, but he wanted to understand her reasoning.

 

 

  Shara’s mind grew distant.

  The holodisplay shifted, showing a diagram of the ship with its spinning habitat canister and heavy engines. A smaller ship was matching spin with the habitat canister as it came in-line with the main airlock.

  Based on his earlier guesses, Crash figured the ship might hold twenty people. It was shaped like a stick bug, not made to spin like the Hesperia.

  Shara said.

  could control the whole ship?> Crash asked.

 

  Crash shifted on the seat.

  the AI said.

  Crash nodded. These humans obviously didn’t care about the threat of a bio-plague. he asked.

  Shara said quickly. The holodisplay shifted to show the location of the escape pod, on the opposite side of the habitat from the main airlock.

  Crash said. The ravens nodded as well, black eyes rapt on the display.

  Shara said.

  Crash asked.

 

  Crash shouted, squawking.

  Another alarm went off in the room. The airlock was open.

  A display to Crash’s left side flashed to an interior sensor, showing a group of humans in ragged hazmat suits and bio masks pushing their way through the tight airlock. The suits meant they were at least a little concerned about the quarantine. They also carried heavy rifles and pistols.

  he asked, flapping his wings. He guessed they would find the command deck in just a few minutes.

  Shara didn’t answer him at first. A series of images flashed in his mind: the messages she was sending to the ravens to explain what they needed to do. The birds in the command deck cawed their understanding and flew out the door, leaving Crash alone among the warning alarms.

  Crash bobbed his head. Unfamiliar panic flooded his mind. He tried to separate the feelings like he had done with all the new emotions, but this one made it hard to breathe. His heart beat faster than he had ever felt it.