Tales from the Colony: An Interstellar Saga Read online

I going to die?”

  “I should think not,” Hendrix said. “Even in the outbreak of ’99, nobody died.”

  “This isn’t any different then?”

  “I should think not,” Hendrix replied.

  He turned his face away because he wasn’t a good enough liar to sell it face to face. This was different, but he was swimming in a sea of unknowns. Hendrix didn’t much like unknowns. No, he didn’t much like them at all.

  Episode no. 3

  Tinker Toys

  Danielle “Danny” Fritz. Maintenance worker. Friend of the Bots. Danny squeezed the last bolt shut tight and released it from the clutches of her wrench. The pipe needed some fastening and badly. She surveyed her surroundings. A bit of daylight shined through the metal grates from above ground, though the atmosphere down here was dim at best.

  The sound of rumbling generators buzzed through the corridors as maintenance drones passed by on wheels and hover rings. The older ones had wheels. They were models from the early days of the Colony, before the residents emerged from Cryo. The newer ones, while few, fluttered about on top of a hover ring. It was a halo fastened onto the bottom of the bot. The device projected a field that kept it separate from the surface, and it slid along by tilting its body in the direction it needed to go.

  “Hey, there,” she said. A small bot stopped. “Watch out for that gas leak fifty meters down. It’ll ruin your paint if you get too close.”

  The bot stood still for a moment. Some lights flickered in the eyes and it hummed a bit before resuming its course down the long corridor. Danny ran around the bend to catch it leaving. She wanted to watch and see if it scooted to the left side. Away from the leaky pipe.

  She didn’t have time to fix it, though. Too many priorities. It stunk because everybody had a problem that needed fixed and when something more important came up, she had the press the rest down on the list. So many voices. In the end, the real working class got the short straw. The bots.

  As she watched it draw closer, the corridor shook subtly, like a rumbling gut within the Colony. The lights went out and the whole place was pitch black … for a moment or two before they returned.

  “The heck?” she said aloud. “Did you guys see that?”

  She glanced over at two bots on wheels. They sat still and some lights flickered from the insides. These ones remained quiet for some time, so Danny walked over. She made her way to their rears and examined the boxes from there.

  “Something happen?” she asked. “Could be hardware, I guess.”

  It could have been the A.I. network hub, though. A power loss was the easiest explanation for the dysfunction. Still, no harm in tinkering with these new toys. She unscrewed the hatch on one and popped it open, revealing a circuit board with some corrosion around the edges. These ones were old, but that still shouldn’t happen. Danny glanced back to see other bots resuming their working motions, but these two hadn’t moved yet.

  “Power surge must have pushed you over the edge.”

  Too bad. She screwed the fixture back into place and walked back to the corridor entrance. It was a T-style junction. She couldn’t leave them here, though. Should call them in to bot maintenance. Danny pulled out her communication radio and dialed the four-digit pin for the maintenance shed. She hoped that someone was on duty.

  “Hey, is anybody there?” She waited for a reply. “I said, is anybody there?”

  “Sorry about that,” someone replied. “I hear the radio from the break room.”

  His voice was gruff, as if he was older and carried a few extra pounds around the waist. His breathing appeared labored, as if he ran half a block to get to the radio.

  “I’m going to need you to send someone down to Maintenance shaft E-23 in Sunset Division.”

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “Two bots ceased functioning and somebody needs to come pick them up.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he explained after a pause. “I don’t have the authority to do that.”

  “Why the heck not?”

  “I’m, uh … I’m just a security guard. I like to hang out here on my breaks.”

  He’s a what? Oh, well that explained a few things.

  “Can you at least tell someone?” she asked.

  “Sure thing, ma’am. As soon as one of the boys gets back, I’ll let him know.”

  “Works for me. I’m going to get back to work.”

  Danny clicked off the radio but held onto it. The E-23 shaft still needed work, but as far as priorities were concerned, the jobs here were finished. She grabbed her toolbox and headed over the edge of the shaft. A button to call for a transport rested on the wall to her left. She pressed it and shortly after, heard the sounds of screeching gears. It wasn’t the tram though.

  She whirled around in excitement that the two drones might be working again, but a giant metal arm came crashing down on her. It scuffed her toolbox and sliced a deep gash in her forearm. Danny cried out, cradling the wound. What happened? Why would they do this? She rushed down the shaft as fast as her legs could carry her, but the sound of spinning wheels followed close behind.

  Episode no. 4

  For a Time

  Sarah Price. Colony Navigator. In charge of reaching the drifting world’s destination. A new home for the last survivors of a dead earth. Sarah thumbed over interstellar charts of the Milky Way. Her eyes poured across clusters of stars and constellations.

  She sat in her office. A fan circulated air from a table in the corner and partially closed blinds let enough sunlight through to shine on her workstation table. Paper mats laid strewn out across the length of the table, each depicting a different sector of the Milky Way. Most of them didn’t matter, but they were all part of the bigger picture.

  “Something’s not right,” she said.

  It’s been almost a month since they woke up from Cryo and the planet was little closer than when they slept. Moreover, positions of the constellations didn’t match up with expected projections. It was subtle. Light-years of distance between the Colony and its destination made examining the problem all the more difficult. She was sure she found something this time though.

  Sarah nudged her glasses back up with her index finger and circled three constellations around their ‘location’ with a red marker. She took the paper mat and posted it up on the wall of her office, taping the corners one by one and stepped back to take a broader look.

  “Now, I need a comparison,” she said. Sarah walked over and entered a PIN on her office radio. “This is Sarah Price. Can I speak with the Captain Bogart?”

  “Apologies, Miss Price,” someone said. “The Captain is occupied.”

  The voice delivered a monotone, almost mechanical reply. It could have been a bot secretary or one of the avatars of the Networked A.I., but more than likely…

  “Is this the Captain’s aide, Benjamin?”

  “You are correct.”

  Surprised the Captain wasn’t sick of him by now. There are only so many jokes an android can tell before you’ve heard them all. It was strange though.

  “I had some information to share with the captain when he has the time, but I needed something from him first.”

  “What service did you require?” he asked.

  “A recent photo of the Milky Way from our position.”

  “That should be no problem, Miss Price. Give me a moment.” She waited a few seconds, tapping her feet. “I’ve attached a file,” he said. “It was taken yesterday, if that is acceptable.”

  “As long as it’s after Cryo, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Good luck on your report, Miss.”

  She clicked off the radio and sat down at her desktop computer. A notification popped up about a new email message, so she opened the folder and downloaded the file. The net was unusually slow today, as if something needed to reboot. Probably something to do with the power outage an hour ago.
She almost felt her apartment shake from whatever it was that happened.

  “Good,” she said. The file was on her desktop.

  She double-clicked and brought up an image of the galaxy from one point of view, but that was enough. Upon inspection, two constellations were fully visible and one partially so. For the next few minutes, she lost herself in the calculations, glancing back and forth from the poster to her monitor. Once she tallied the results, however, the reality left her paralyzed.

  “We’ve been standing still,” she said. “Standing still … for a thousand years.”

  Episode no. 5

  Run a Diagnostic

  Nicolas “Nick” Valdez. Chief computer programmer and software engineer. Lazy jerk. Nick eyed a monitor to his left, on which a camera streamed a live feed of the Captain’s aide. The android sat at a desk, performing secretary functions and occasionally answering communications. Nick didn’t have access to the communications themselves, but he was getting close.

  His central monitor had feed requests. Mostly blank. Blogs, news reports and unencrypted communications displayed themselves in white text over a black background. Characters and words flowed down in a steady stream of data. A window to his world, or at least what was left of it.

  The Colony existed as an intermediary point between ruin and a ripe destination, but he had powers here. It would be excellent to live out his days in the presence of an abundance of technology, rather than the alternative. Grasslands, lakes and deserts. A world requiring cultivation. Starting over on a