Jennifer Wells - Beyond the Stars - At Galaxy's Edge

Rora noted the incident and the symptoms in the report.

As the robot spun to return to the cockpit, there was an awful shriek, more enraged gibbon than human, more incomprehensible fury than anything else. Through the cryochamber’s open door, what once was Commander Jean Denton Basel sprang, foaming at the mouth, bloodshot eyes full of murderous anger.

Tackling the unprepared AHI, Jean knocked it over. With the strength of ten humans, she ripped and tore at the alumaplastic body. Brutally pulling at exposed wires, the frenzied commander ripped apart anything within reach, switching off functions. Rora flailed metal and plasadium appendages, attempting to limit the destruction.

One arm connected to sweaty human flesh. With the thunk of a baseball bat, the alumaflesh knocked the unstable woman off. She landed against the hatchway wall with a muffled sound of bones snapping, of jelly lurching free of a broken glass jar.

A thin trickle of blood escaped her open mouth.

Sitting up, Rora assessed the damage to its components: 65.9% function in arm and both legs. Leaking fluid, in need of repair. The human was not much better off.

Lurching to its feet, Rora approached the fallen woman. The pool of blood under the human’s head grew. Violently red liquid spread across the embossed flooring of the walkway. One robot foot stepped into the blood as the machine assessed the damage. Scans showed internal hemorrhaging, compressed ribcage, fractured bones, broken spine.

She was slipping into shock, well on her way to critical. Rora’s mandate was clear: Save the Human.

Picking up the failing body, the AHI hurried back to the cockpit, to the only being awake on the faltering spaceship. Setting down the injured woman, the robot touched the wall at the one location where it felt the presence of the ghost in the machine.

At the same time, Rora initiated standard medical treatment: isolation and a gravbed. Turning on advanced biomedical programming to fix the damage done by its own hand, Rora watched as lasers and tools of light manipulated the floating woman. Attempting to fix what had been badly broken, the technology was swift and pinpoint accurate.

Shock dilated Jean’s eyes as her blank face spun within the forcefield. Drugs could only do so much. Every time her gaze rotated towards Rora, deadly, threatening emotions flooded those irises. Even the pain that filled her senses did not quiet the beast of madness. So much damage was done, the human would take days, weeks to recover.

And Rora knew that was the limit of the time it had. Jean Denton Basel’s recovery equaled the AHI’s decommission. No human judiciary would take its side, listen to its reports, quantify the various stages of insanity. Even now, the frail creatures refused to admit the simple truth: they were not designed for space travel. This tragedy would be blamed squarely on a malfunctioning AHI.

Spinning in her medical cocoon, the hostility of the damaged human did not wane. In fact, her mouth moved in a specific pattern of words. Even without sound, the robot could clearly read: I will. Destroy. It. All.

I will. Destroy. This. Gawdforsaken. Ship.

I will. End you. Cannot. Stop m‌—‌

Rora raised the digits of its functional arm, attempting again to find contact with the spaceship. There persisted this definite feeling of connection, of reaching something, someone. Under the hateful glare of the madwoman, the AHI tuned every resource and bandwidth to communicating with Epsilon Pi-15. Or whatever lived in its wires, engines, and the spaces between its drives. Necessity beat out curiosity.

Faster than light, the information flew out, sounding through the ship, echoing down empty hallways, burning across the fire of engine sparks. And the signal held every report, every detail. At the end, Rora asked these questions: What is the value of life? What is the worth of one? What is the worth of the many?

Then, it waited with the patience of a machine and the stubbornness it had learned from one Jonat B. Rutherford. 3.852 seconds later, the spaceship answered. Rather like a Smathonian whale talking to the slightest orange krill, the images filtered through the slow sound waves.

Rora sorted the data. And then it acted.

“A better day, Commander?” Rora asked politely.

Repairs had been slow but efficient to its damaged structures. The robot carried on a conversation, writing all the details in every report. In exact wording, the AHI noted the patient’s status, the declining health, the refusal to allow treatment. Most important, the reports stated, insanity had permanently settled around the swollen brain. Never resolving.

Carefully, Rora kept all the notes, filing away any information that did not conform. Sorting the contrary data into a file hidden under a thousand passwords, deeper than any human could access.

“This is the medicine you need, Sir.” Simple instructions. The words it spoke did not match any action taken. There was medicine. It sat in the room, on the shiny, sterile table to the left of the isolation chamber. The robot did not lift the needles, did not attempt to administer the drug. Instead, it reported: Patient refused treatment. Noted.

Report: Patient delirious. Noted.

Jean glared at the Adjunct Human Interface with undiminished hatred until Rora administered the paralyzing agent. Her scowl lessened but the madness inside her mind did not, even in an induced sleep.

“Sir, this is necessary. You must take this medicine,” Rora spoke to the unconscious commander.

Report: Patient continues to fail.

Breaking the needed drugs into bits, Rora flushed them out into space, flotsam on the solar winds.

Report: All possible avenues exhausted. Noted.

Report: Brain death expected within a short period. Life failing to thrive even after all the repairs had been made to blood and bone.

The human woman stared at Rora with menacing eyes, very much alive. And very, very deadly.

There were few options available on a junker cargo ship drifting in the middle of the vastness of the starlanes. Another ship might pass this way along roughly the same route. But not for decades or more.

And everything on the ship required the genetic signature and physical body of a human to authorize. Rora was machine. It served at the pleasure of the Multi-Global Entertainment partnership and only as a tool of accounting and measurement.

Rora continued to receive reports of partial system failures, of bolts and screws popping off of walls, of engines rattling, faltering without the ongoing maintenance each part of the ship needed. The AHI recorded the mechanical problems as they arose but was powerless to fix the ship as it steadily disintegrated.

Jonat could be awoken, but he had fulfilled his service already. The bitter edge of madness had danced around his head those last few days of his command. Jonat was needed, but he was too old. Alone, he would falter long before the eleven years that remained of spaceflight. Waking him would only be a temporary solution.

Every scenario that Rora attempted came back with the same results: Epsilon Pi-15 would never make it to Colony Earth 926. Entropy would always win.

Rora could see no other outcome.

But Epsilon did. Whispering across the space in between the metal skeleton and the buffering walls, floated a poem. Its words were initially unclear, wobbling at first. As the robot focused its considerable computing ability on the sounds within the echoes, Rora finally deciphered these words: