Nexus by Robert Boyczuk (best large ebook reader txt) 📕

“Are you going to stare at the sky all day?” Josua asked. In the last weeks his demeanour had changed subtly around Sav; he’d assumed more the role of commander, deferring less and less to Sav’s judgements on things concerning The Viracosa. “Or are you going to give us a hand?” Several flakes clung to Josua’s hair and had collected on his shoulders and in the folds of his jacket. He shook himself and dislodged most of the accumulation. He raised his watch so that its face pointed accusingly at Sav. “The clock is running. Remember?”

For the first time in thirty years, the stasis facility hummed with something akin to contentment. Until recently, its backbone network had been down, its AI nodes cut off from one another, its power dwindling. But in the last few months that creeping deterioration had been halted. And, to a degree, reversed. The backbone had been restored; power levels had risen sharply; administrative computers had come back online and central authority re-established. Of course, there was no way to recover the clients it had been forced to discontinue. But in the last half year, it had not had to terminate one active cell.

But now the complex was on its own again.

Early that morning, while the sky was still dark, SAIN-FA-1 (Semi-autonomous Artificial Intelligence Node-Facility Administration 1), had sent a modified waldo to sit on its haunches next to the lift pad. Using its remote, it broadcast images of the departure of the last three autonomous intelligences, called Josua, Sav and Ruen, as they boarded their shuttle and lifted off. No one had told 1 (as SAIN-FA-1 liked to refer to itself) explicitly that they would not be returning; however, the AI had inferred from an analysis of their conversations and those of the ones who’d left before, that they would not be back for a considerable time-if at all. Still, 1 was confident it could run the facility for centuries, if not indefinitely, without human intervention. After their ship had pierced the clouds and disappeared, 1 sent the waldo back to the lake to resume its repairs on the solar array.

It was four hours later that things started to go wrong.

The waldo at the lake stopped transmitting.

Within two hundred nanoseconds of the first event, one of the local AIs reported all six cells under its care had terminated. The AI itself abruptly stopped transmitting. Concerned, 1 queried the node but received no response. Twenty nanoseconds later, two more AI nodes reported similar problems before they too went offline. One, however, managed to transmit a visual it had captured before falling silent: eight simultaneous flashes, one atop each of the chamber’s active stasis cells. The domes imploded, a backwash of cryoprotective glycerol splashing onto the chamber floor. By the time administrative AI had reviewed the visual, over half the remaining AIs had reported their own loss of clients and gone offline, three more managing to transmit images nearly identical to the first.

Less than one hundred milliseconds had passed since the anomalous events began.

1 didn’t feel panic. It’s designers hadn’t coded for that. What it did feel, however, was urgency-an overwhelming need to find the cause of the crisis and to determine possible solutions. It suspended all other processing tasks, then immediately performed a priority pattern-matching search. It found a likely correlation: in the library of recorded activity it discovered that over the last few months one of the humans had visited all one thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven active cells in the complex. And this same human had also been to every AI in the facility-including 1 itself. The conclusion, when it came a few billionths of a second later, was inescapable: the human meant to destroy the clients and the AIs that tended them. And there was nothing 1 could do about it.

In its last few nanoseconds, SAIN-FA-1 asked itself the machine equivalent of Why?

But before its search routines could ferret out any sort of answer, it too went offline.

Outside, a frozen hell.

Bitter arctic winds sweep down from the icefields and surge across a vast white plain, beating angrily against the arc of the dome. The structure is ten kilometers in diameter and sunk deeply into the bedrock; its shell is several meters wide, but its outermost layer is composed of a transparent material less than a micromillimeter thick, its atoms locked in an inconceivably rigid structure. It withstands the brutal force of the wind, the stone-cracking chill of the freeze. Even when the unlikely happens and this layer experiences a microscopic tear, tiny molecular machines repair the breach in seconds.

Inside, a lush paradise.

Dark-skinned trees with arching branches and serrated leaves tower just inside the shell, press their uppermost branches against the underside of the dome’s belly, oblivious to the deadly conditions meters away; smaller, brown-stalked plants with bright green and orange spikes rear up to hug the lower reaches of the walls; spreading out on the forest floor are dense, variegated plants, with broad, glossy leaves; soft, olive mosses cling to rocks at the right height for sitting or reclining; a remarkable array of flowers, a cacophony of colors, huddle around small rivulets and ponds; and winding throughout this idyll are dirt paths, barely wide enough for two to walk abreast. Though no one has ever gardened here, the paths remain clear, the flora obedient.

The forest begins to falter a kilometer from the outer wall; eventually it gives way to fields and streams, flagged walkways now meandering through tall grasses. Single trees dot the landscape, offering shade. Here and there are small orchards, the branches of the fruit trees heavy with ripe offerings. Two kilometers further and the fields also disappear. Now the sharp angles and geometric shapes of artificial structures are visible in the distance: sixty-four huge white cylinders, like monstrous fuel tanks, form a ring, two kilometers in diameter, in the centre of the dome. Each cylinder is several hundred meters in diameter and rises the same height. Clinging to the base of these structures like creeping vines are clutches of buildings, displaying a bewildering variety of styles and shapes: some are small and cozy, others large, rambling and many-storied. Yet none of these buildings climbs to even a third the height of the cylinders.

As imposing as the cylinders are, they do not command the most attention, for rising within their ring is a precipitous mountain whose peak-two kilometers overhead-pierces the roof of the dome like a spike; the summit juts out into the unremitting arctic winds. Here, at the apex of the mountain, a platform has been erected. On it, a small group of Speakers wait, clutching a thin rail.

Though they could have watched from within the safety of the dome, or have raised another protective bubble around them, they have chosen, on a whim, to experience the event as directly as possible. They exchange glances, excited thoughts passing between them like words would amongst people without their gift. Occasionally, one laughs aloud, a half-heard sound torn and scattered by the wind. Despite the protection of their skinsuits, they instinctively huddle together as the wind gusts and tugs insistently at arms and legs. Still, the party manages an air of festivity and bravado, as if they are about to depart for a picnic or a camping trip. A few keep their minds clear, their thoughts to themselves; instead they watch the heavens.

A woman using a handheld tracking device points directly overhead. Heads crane in unison, but nothing is visible.

Then, skimming the atmosphere, the meteor blazes to life, the air in front of it compressed and luminous. Lighting the night sky, it leaves an incandescent trail in its wake for several brilliant seconds. A sonic boom follows like an afterthought.

As if in response to the sound of the shock wave, three of the satellites girding the planet fire their pulse weapons in unison, and the meteor bursts asunder, hundreds of fiery pieces fanning outward from the brilliant locus. The fragments burn in different colours; many flicker uncertainly. Stark, dramatic shadows grow and waver in the trembling light. Several of those observing gasp; others tighten their hands on the railing. All eyes are locked on the web of light growing overhead. Even the wind has stilled for an instant, as if it too has deferred to the spectacle. Only now, seconds after the meteor’s destruction, a dull boom, like distant thunder, reaches their ears.

In a few heartbeats it is over: fragments have already disappeared behind a mountain range to the South; others vaporize, their light fading to nothing long before they reach the ground. One piece, burning intensely, arcs downward and strikes several hundred kilometers to the north on the plain, throwing up a spume of snow, ice and steam. A moment later those on the platform feel the slightest of tremblings sing through the structure. None of the fragments come close enough to the dome for the orbitals to bother firing again.

For a time the group stands, the afterimages burning their retinae; then, when even the phantom trails have faded from their eyes, they remember where they are. The wind picks up. The show is over, the festive air has vanished. In silence they file back into the dark opening next to the platform and descend the spiral of steep, carved steps. Behind them, rock grows over the opening, as if healing a wound.

Reluctantly, they descend, returning to the unspeakable beauty and limitless abundance they’ve left below, each to his or her own private paradise. They drag themselves back towards the drab, endless routine of their lives, and the lonely task to which they are forever committed.

Regaining consciousness, Liis found herself hanging upside down in darkness on the bridge of the Ea; bands of pain seared her chest, thighs and legs where the padded straps held her into the pilot’s chair. Intense pain radiated from her left forearm: she was certain it was broken. Alarm klaxons wailed obstinately. System warnings spilled through the interface and into the earphone on her headset: half a dozen ruptures in the hull; navigation out completely; stress fractures in the shielding for the power plant; radiation levels creeping towards dangerous levels. Further failures, the ship informed her, were imminent.

It worked! she thought. I can’t believe it worked!

The meteorite-or at least the part which held the Ea-had managed to hold together after the orbitals had fired. The explosive charges they had planted had detonated precisely at the right moment, a split second after the beam weapons had hit, shattering the rock along its fault lines to preserve their section in tact. She remembered the wild spin they’d been sent into after the explosion; how it had felt like her brain was going to be pulped from the g-forces. But the mass of the iron deposits had swung the rock round, working like an ablation shield to protect the lighter, more porous silicon and magnesium oxide layers into which they had tunnelled to hide their ship. Perhaps it hadn’t been the smoothest of rides, but the braking and attitude jets had fired when they’d been programmed to-their action hidden by the burn of atmosphere on the outer layers of the meteorite-slowing and angling their descent enough for them to survive the impact in the weak gravitational field of the planet. She was grateful she’d blacked out before they hit.

Despite her pain, she felt an odd jubilance, a quickening of her blood unlike anything she had experienced since-