trans_9 | Out For a Ride [open]

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Out For a Ride [open]

On his last visit, Zouichi had visited the remains of one of the locked-down cities he'd passed through in the course of carrying out his missions. This time he wasn't particularly in the mood for a fight... but maybe he was in the mood for a ride.

The environment had taken on the form of the structure he sometimes saw in his dreams, an interminably long organic expanse. Sometimes the landscape grew upwards, into a mass of domed, seemingly alive city buildings. Sometimes there were portals underground, passages that delved deep into its core, whose walls were lined with the unidentifiable biomechanical innards that pulsed with the alien life of this place.

Actually, come to think of it, it reminded him a little of Stacy.

The area he was on now was a vast expanse of some unrecognizable material... but it was flat and solid, and therefore perfectly fine terrain for the XLA. Around it was not a sky, but the emptiness of open space. Whatever strange atmosphere surrounded this place was completely transparent, allowing anyone present to simply stare out at the stars.

He eased the motorcycle forward, with Fuyu hovering over his shoulder like a pale ghost.

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Anwei had been nervous about the Sensoriums as soon as she heard about them. A full immersion virtual environment sounded like a very effective tool for memory editing to her, especially considering the haze that some of the ship's crew had about their situation.

But everyone else seemed to use them - and apparently some social functions were held in them. So she might as well explore now, and with a guide if possible. There'd be a safety telltale, surely.

As soon as she stepped inside, though, her breath was taken away. It looked like a spaceport, with holograms masking out the great derricks and rolling towers used to access the ships. An empty spaceport that at any moment would be filled with incoming ships, flatmovers, people, hustle and bustle and noise - the noise of home. Above it the stars, each one seeing to call out Come, visit me.

Rolling towards her was what looked like what an Earth motorcycle would want to be when it grew up. And aboard was a familiar figure - with company.

"Hello!" she said, waving.

"Anwei," Zouichi said, raising an arm back in greeting. "You're looking well. Did you finish what you were working on?"

Fuyu peered over at the woman, a humanoid with light hair. "Anwei?" Zouichi had told her most of what had happened during the latest mission, of course, but she hadn't quite expected Anwei to appear as closely human as she apparently did.

"It's working away while I'm here. I'm trying to make sure that Stacy's translation engine can handle alien medical terminology in a consistent fashion." Anwei really, really did not want to think of what might happen if the translations were wrong.

She gave a formal half-bow to the hovering hologram. This must be Fuyu. "A pleasure to meet you, ma'am."

"You mean it doesn't handle it consistently now?" Zouichi made a mental note not to visit Medical until she was done.

Fuyu did the same. "Oh, please call me Fuyu. Zouichi has told me a little about you already; I'm pleased to finally have the chance to meet you, as well."

"No, no, it's been very good at handling humanoid medical data. It's when I give it data about alien species that are non-humanoid, that have multiple organ systems that don't have any parallels in the current records, that I have to double-check and make sure that she is assigning unique terms to every different system, and grouping them appropriately." She cupped her hands in the air in sort of a shoulderless shrug. "Of course there aren't any species such as that awake currently on Stacy, but if we ever meet or make alliances with one, the database will be invaluable."

Anwei touched her fingertips to her right ear. "Thank you, Fuyu. I have an AI companion, Horanckk, who is unfortunately MIA. I hope you get the chance to meet both of us someday."

"Ah, I see. You had me worried for a second."

Fuyu smiled at her. "I hope so, too. He sounds like a wonderful person. Zouichi and I haven't had the opportunity to meet any more of our kind for some time... and most humans simply don't interact very extensively with AIs. At least, not as companions."

"Sorry, not my intention at all. I'm just being very cautious." The last thing she wanted was a reputation for mishandling data.

Anwei smiled. "Horanckk has always been the best of companions to me - although he originally was just supposed to supervise me. My family never thought that as soon as Horanckk told me how I could do it, I would start improving him, giving him more abilities. He has grown so much - and so have I, with him. But - he wasn't with me when I was rescued. So I suspect he's not in one of the pods. Or hiding in Stacy's memory."

She frankly appraised the massive black motorcycle. "Did this belong to you as well? My, and I thought Stacy was being generous in giving me a shirt and a handful of datastores!"

Fuyu looked pensive. "I see... so you were separated before being brought here. I was together with Zouichi when he was brought up onto the ship, but for whatever reason, they stored me in the Vehicle Bay while Zouichi was placed in one of the pods. I hope you two are reunited soon."

Zouichi slid one hand along the glossy black surface of the bike. "Well, I guess you could say that. More like it was issued with me, along with my weapons. It's kind of a... symbiotic relationship, I guess? Fuyu spends -- spent -- most of her time in it."

And he would have been rather upset if it was lost; it was practically a part of him, having been expressly designed to provide support. "All they gave you was a shirt and some data? You should have held out for better terms."

Anwei's eyes widened. "You remember being brought onto the ship? Was - do you remember who did it?"

"I didn't have a chance to negotiate for better terms, unfortunately. The last thing I remember, I was on Earth, in an ice storm. I was standing over a pool of water, and I had a shovel with me for some reason. There was something in the water. Something black and white and gray, and I couldn't quite figure out what it was. I couldn't quite see it. And then a flash of light and - here."

She gestured at the wide expanse around them. "Is this supposed to be a spaceport? It rather looks like one."

She shook her head "No, I'm sorry to disappoint you. My memories end when I was out with Zouichi, at approximately the same time he described. I reactivated aboard the ship, alone, not long before Zouichi himself woke up. It was a very unusual experience, and as far as I can tell, there are no other gaps in my memory." She didn't bother to mention the possibility that her memory was altered -- just because she had no record of it didn't mean it wasn't possible.

Zouichi frowned. "You were on Earth? That's quite a coincidence. What were you doing there?"

"No, I... I'm not really sure, actually. Occasionally, while asleep, I see this place." It was one of the reasons he didn't sleep much unless he had to, actually.

"That's unfortunate. I wish there was some way to figure out how we are located and rescued. It must be quite an operation: to dive into the middle of a dimension that is coming apart, to locate one person or a few people, and then to somehow escape." She was imagining a hurricane in space, shredding the planets and stars and all between them, and something - someone? Stacy? sliding through and plucking out just one life, and then vanishing.

Anwei looked off into space for a moment, which meant that her eyes drifted in two different directions. "I was on a long-term field assignment. I was just supposed to stay in orbit, but I got curious and went planetside. The link to Horanckk cut out and," she twitched all over, "I was stuck. I suppose Stacy rescued me from at as well, got me back into space where I might have another chance of finding him."

"Interesting that you'd dream of it. It doesn't look like any specific port, but sometimes they use holograms to cover ships and infrastructure over. Have people land on instruments, and not reveal who they are parked next to." Which was quite nice if someone didn't want to be parked to, say, a ship full of mercenaries.

"Yes, I find it rather distressing how little we know about the circumstances in which we were brought aboard."

Now Zouichi looked a little concerned, "You were cut off from Horanckk? That must have been quite a storm. Were you in a cave system of some sort?"

"This? Looks like a spaceport? Are those also organic? I've delved into one of the passages underground, briefly, and it wasn't long before I'd have had to leave the bike behind if I wanted to go any further."

There had to be records somewhere. The destruction of a universe should have huge repercussions, shouldn't it? As soon as they got to a planet with a decent integrated trans-system communication array, Anwei was going to get some answers.

"No, no, I didn't have an instance of Horanckk with me, he wasn't certain he could integrate with the local computer equipment. He was in orbit, with my transport, and I was talking to him through the audio feed and then he was just," she touched her right ear again, "silent. And I did everything I could think of to try and contact him again, and I couldn't. I could get an automated signal from the transport, but no conscious response from him." She sighed. "Which doesn't sound like the way the Ohm operate, at least."

She rubbed her foot experimentally against the ground, or whatever it was. "Organic? Not usually. I've seen crystalline, and nanoformed ceramic."

"That is strange. Perhaps the sudden cutoff in communications could be a side effect of whatever process is used to pick people off their planets and transport them to the ship."

Zouichi shook his head. "I didn't think so. I don't know what this is. My planet doesn't have the kind of biotechnology that could create something like this; at least, not that I know of. So where did this come from?"

Anwei arched one brow. "I hope not," she said dryly. "Because it happened three hundred and fifty days before I found myself standing over that pool of water with the shovel. If they are scouting out that far in advance - no, other people would remember. It's just an unhappy coincidence." She looked down, suddenly serious. "I suppose it did prepare me to be here without him, though...."

"I don't quite know how this virtual environment is drawn from our thoughts," she said, looking at the vanishing horizon. "Or how our dreams and memories are affected by being here." She brightened. "It does look very good for riding a motorcycle on, though. Nothing to run into."

Okay, now he was confused. "You were stranded on Earth, without communications, for a year?"

"I don't really understand how it works, either," said Zouichi, "I would think that if using these rooms had an affect on crew member health, a warning would have been posted about it. On the other hand, being on this ship itself may be affecting us in ways we can't yet determine."

"Well, yes. That's one of its charm points, I suppose." He looked at Anwei. "Would you like to try driving?"

"Long-term field assignment means long-term," she shrugged. "They were expecting me back within a year, and Earth at the time was not on the galactic contact net. Fortunately I'd been studying Earth media in preparation, and I did have some knowledge of native computer architecture and the banking system. But it was a very lonely, stressful year. For him as well, if he was up there unable to contact me, I imagine," she added, nodding to Fuyu.

"I get the distinct impression that the crew is making it up as they go along," she said with a roll of her eyes. "Nobody's been harmed so far, so they keep going. And of course all the diagnostic equipment is either a part of Stacy or its data is run through her, so there aren't any objective records of long-term effects."

Her eyes lit up. "Driving? I've ridden a bicycle, and I know that the throttle and the brakes are different hands, yes? Could you show me?"

"Is Horanckk unable to download himself to a portable device?" asked Fuyu. "Or did he perhaps have other duties to perform?"

Zouichi laughed. "That's a good part of what I do, actually -- make things up as I go along. But I understand what you're saying. Are there any diagnostic systems aboard the ship that aren't part of it?"

"Sure," he said. "Actually, on this bike the throttle and front brake are both on the right. You twist the handle like this," he demonstrated, "To accelerate. Not too hard, a little of that goes a long way. The rear brake is this lever by your foot..." He pointed to each component in turn, explaining how each worked.

"Got all that?"

"He can, but he's so used to being connected to a larger system that he prefers not to," she replied. "He was - I suppose the best word is haughty - about the idea of interfacing with any Earth systems. And I was only supposed to be away for a few hours...I don't know what happened to him. And if I do find him again, it might be a different instance of him, in which case he won't even remember what did happen."

"Well, all three of us are still here, so we must be doing something right," she laughed. "I haven't seen any signs yet of discrete analytic systems. I think that if I do find any diagnostic equipment planetside and bring it back up, I'm going to have to shield it, and bring up static copies of all the software, just so that Stacy doesn't lean in and start rewriting all the outputs to her own tastes."

She nodded her head, following along with his instructions. "Why are the front and rear brakes separate controls? Are there situations where I would brake one wheel and not the other?"

"You have different copies of Horanckk?" Fuyu looked puzzled. "Are the others backup copies?"

He nodded. "If you ever need any help carrying those things aboard, let me know. I'm pretty good at lifting things, at least."

"Well, the front's got more power, but the rear brake's good for slowing down around corners and such. Some people use the front almost exclusively, but you'll stop more effectively using both. Try not to brake too hard all at once, though, or you'll send the bike into a skid."

"Horanckk was multi-instanced; there were multiple identical copies of him existing throughout the fleet and nearby space," she explained. "They would go their separate ways, and do their different tasks, and then return and re-merge into one shared knowledgebase. Another reason he didn't like going into a portable device: he could get quite large sometimes.

"But I never knew him to meet another copy of himself that he did not at once embrace and greet as himself. In fact, sometimes he would meet one of himself who had been lost for weeks or months (much longer in computer time of course) and go quiet for a few hours just - savoring the differences."

"The better the computer gear is, the smaller it is, generally. I am hoping to bring it all up in my pockets. And I suspect you are very good at many things," she said frankly. "Your companion, your gear, yourself - your makers made you well."

"OK, throttle, brake, other brake, now let's see..." She held her hands up in the air and a helmet formed between them: bulky and glossy, with jagged lettering striped across the blue glossy surface.

"My space helmet," and as she concentrated it shrunk in her hands, gaining air vents and straps. "Well, that certainly seems to work. Ah, I really don't want to risk damaging your bike, and certainly not Fuyu! Could you ride behind me, maybe?"

Now this was a strange concept. Multiple copies of an AI that could remerge with each other?

"I see... there's only one of me at any one time. If I were ever lost, a backup copy of me could be activated to restore me at the point at which my backup was saved... but..."

"That's not going to happen," Zouichi said flatly.

Again, Anwei had said something that had taken him off guard; no one Zouichi knew was quite so direct with their praise. He looked away awkwardly, trying to think of something to say. The best he could come up with was, "Well, they did, um. Design us to last."

"I wouldn't worry too much about the bike; apparently, crew members can't be harmed in here, and Fuyu counts as a crew member. Besides, it's pretty sturdy. But I'd be happy to, if it'd make you feel safer."

"I would never wish that to happen to you, Fuyu," Anwei reinforced. "Horanckk was used to it, to having many ego-selves that parted and met. If you are one and only one, so you should stay."

"And if you help in restoring the universes as people seem to believe we can, then all their fine work will be repaid - don't you think?"

Anwei looked at the motorcycle, then looked at the flat expanse of non-pavement around her. "I am still uncertain about exactly how Stacy would protect me from harm if the motorcycle rolled onto me - would she grab it in a tractor beam, or a tentacle, or something? If you could, it would make me feel safer." She straddled the machine, letting her feet and hands adjust themselves on the controls, and shifted herself forward on the motorcycle's seat.

Fuyu nodded. "I don't think I'd be comfortable being more than one person at once."

"I guess," said Zouichi. "But... people around here aren't too clear on how, exactly, they're going to restore the universes. The one plan I have heard seemed regrettably short on certainties."

Zouichi got on behind her in one practiced motion. "I'm not sure... but we could always try and find out."

Anwei smiled at Fuyu. "I certainly don't want to make you uncomfortable. If you and Horanckk ever meet, he'll probably chew your virtual ear off talking about himself. It's a personality trait we both share."

Anwei frowned and scratched between her brows, before closing the helmet visor. "It seems all very symbolic, doesn't it? Threads, and a Tapestry, and being able to move Threads by our path...I just have this horrible image of some great meeting at the end of the universes with the Ohm, and they challenge us to an embroidery competition. Speed knitting. Heavy combat crochet."

"I think I'd better start out slowly...." she let the words trail off as she gently twisted the throttle, then immediately loosening it and testing the brakes. Then another little hop, and another, until she finally dared to smoothly turn the throttle and start to move, rolling forward faster and faster.

She wiggled in her seat. "It works!"

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Out For a Ride [open]

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