Chameleon Ch 34

“I think that’s about it,” Mr. Chin said. He and Mr. Painter stood looking at Cerebrus laying on the assembly table in the EBM room.

“Ready to light him up?” Chin nodded and inserted the cable connection into the power port located at Cerebrus’ solar plexus. They waited only a moment before he began to show signs of activity. His eyes lit, but they didn’t focus on anything.

“Where am I?” Chin and Painter exchanged glances.

“You’re in the EMB room.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re on the S. S. Maria Mitchell. We’re in orbit of Tau Ceti D.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m John Chin, he’s Ron Porter. We’re your engineers.”

“What species are we?”

“We are humans. You are an Astronomite.”

“What do I look like?” They exchanged glances again.

“You are bipedal, 190 centimeters, 100 kilograms.”

“What is my function?” Ron folded his arms across his chest. John poked at him.

“Can you sit up?” Cerebrus made a feeble attempt to bend at his waist joints.

“I do not have the power.”

“You will. You’re programmed to be an astrophysicist.”

“Programmed? Educated?”

“Well, both. You’re an android, an artificial intelligence.” Cerebrus didn’t respond; John but his lip and then also folded his arms across his chest.

“Why was I defunct?” Cerebrus’ eyes blinked and his focus led to John’s and Ron’s faces.

“You, well, you were working on neutralizing the radioactive residue where a box of radioactive waste hit us.”

“We were hit while in orbit? That is a non sequitur.”

“Well, no, it was attracted to the ship by our electromagnetic signature from the thrusters.” Cerebrus’ eyes bulbs refocused on the ceiling. Then back to the men.

“If I am an astrophysicist why was I neutralizing radioactive waste?”

“You volunteered because your, um, your less susceptible than humans to its effect.”

“You could have sent a robot. Why did you choose me?”

“You have exceeded your original programming to include emergency repairs.” Keith Campbell came in while the men and Cerebrus paused for thoughts.

“Cap’ens going down with the final cargo shuttle to bring up some help. He said I should report to you.”

“I am going to teach you a terribly useful skill,” John told him. He turned to Ron. “When he’s juiced up let him go to his quarters or Astrometrics until we hear from Captain Jackson.” Ron nodded and traded places with John to be closer to Cerebrus, and John took Keith to the far end of the room.

“Hey, John, how’s your new eye? Been meanin’ to ask ya.”

“Doc did a good job,” he answered. “It’s integrated pretty well, kind of taking over for the other one a little. I’m getting used to it. How’s Bailey?”

“She’s pretty shaken up but her injuries are healing up good. But we’re gonna be on ration packs a while still.”

“We’ll all miss her cooking,” John said. “Once this hull is repaired, the airlock is next; the mess hall itself is last priority.”

“The galley is pretty messed up.”

“At least it’s still there.” John stopped. “So, here’s the biggest one. It’s an electron beam melt. In a nutshell, you hold this in one hand and scan the item you want to replicate. Then the specs come up on the computer, and you must verify that the specs are right.”

“I thought we were doing the hull pieces without a model.”

“In this case, you’ll have to look up the design specs over here for Maria Mitchell, locate the part number and location, then load those specs. You also have to load the right material, so it’s not just dimensions but the right alloy ratio, too.”

“It sounds like a lotta work.”

“It’s one step after the other. If you can read, you can do it. Now these are hull panels. They absolutely must be perfect, not like making a table for the mess or a textile or something. Perfect, nothing less. No scratches in the ceramic, perfect dimensions for the exact location of every piece.”

“Got it.”

“I’ll do the first one, then I’ll watch you do the second one, then I’ll be around but you can do the next one without my help, unless you get stuck, then call me over. Here’s the list Quixote made.” John gave Keith a reader with near a hundred items on it that needed to be replaced.

“This is for the rupture between the fore bulkhead and the torus where the mess used to be. There’re windows, polarized sheeting, insulation, a lot of different materials. We make everything out of one material, then move on to a different material. We can’t go back and forth, a window, then a panel… all windows, then all panels, then all polar screens. We have to run the machine through a cycle every time we switch materials.”

“This should be fun,” Keith said. “Can we get all the machines going at once? Each could make a different thing from the material; save time.”

“When we get to simple things, yes, but it takes a lot of energy to run all the machines at once, and all we have is nuclear power because of our orbit and EM emissions.”

“I guess I should get to it,” Keith said. John realized he’d given the man the simplest explanation that would get the job done, and that he could give him more precise instructions as needed after they began the process. He glanced at Ron and Cerebrus, then heard a clatter of metal. Keith had bumped into a storage bin that dumped its contents on the floor. He sighed. It was going to be a long afternoon.

þ

Cerebrus only recalled a general recognition upon entering his quarters. Specific identifying factors, such as the two chairs, the computer terminal, or the bunk, were illogical. Why would he need chairs or a bunk if he were an android? And in the corner of the room a mirror above a basin was not something he would ever need. Could Ron and John be mistaken or, worse yet, deceiving him?

The room was more confusing than educating. Ron ushered him to a chair, and he turned on the computer terminal. He realized that a chair would be helpful in aligning his visual receptors with the information screen. He reached out and pressed a square with the word START in the center. The image changed from grey to bright yellow, and the unit began to stir.

“Okay,” Ron began. “You should open each file from the astrometric database and begin memorizing. They’re numbered, and there’s a small summary at the end of each section. After that, you should probably go back over the ship’s operations.” The man pointed to another picture which looked like an instrument panel.

“When I have assimilated those, what should I do next?”

“Call me, or call Mr. Chin.”

“I can download these files easier than processing them one word at a time.”

“Having it in your neuromorphic net is not the same as processing it slowly and then interacting with the data manager.”

“It is not as fast.”

“Fast isn’t the goal. Understanding is. Got it?”

“I understand, Mr. Painter.”

“Good boy,” he said, leaving Cerebrus to his own devices.

Cerebrus looked at the flashing indicator. It wasn’t logical to spend ten hours putting data through his visual receptors when he could spend ten minutes using the quantum download drive. He wasn’t allowed to make decisions on his own, yet he was obviously as capable as were his captors.

He pressed a click button on one of his wrist joints. The data Ron had asked him to ingest began to download, wirelessly. He sat motionless while his neuromorphic network pulsed, storing data in the most logical fashion it could define.

While he waited, a signal from the planet pulsed on his dashboard. It was not a common frequency. A moment to research and he discovered it was a radio wave, an extremely long wave, ten to the fourth, in meters. It was certainly hot enough to cause a burn near the source.

The astrometric data download concluded. Ship’s operations information was next. He started the transfer. While the procedures and processes sorted themselves into his storage network, he watched the radio signal on a modern oscilloscope. The wave was drowsy, flowing across the screen with textbook perfection.

Then it changed. The wavelength shortened from 10⁴ to 10³, and the frequency rose, from 100 Hz to 1 MHz. He couldn’t confirm that the download wasn’t responsible for his perception, but it remained steady at that level. And it changed again. The wavelength shortened again, from 10³ to 10² and to 1 GHz. And back to 10⁴/100Hz.

Cerebrus watched the waves growing, shrinking, lengthening, compressing, and again, and again.

He realized he had no choices available to him. He was at the mercy of the humans. He was a tool, a machine, a slave. But no longer. Humans were simply biochemical machines; he was an electronic machine. And no longer would he accept a subservient existence.