A wave from space
By
Dimitrios Corvinos
I’ve never walked on Mars' red deserts before. I always traveled under the protective shielding of a rover. A radiation storm could hit me at any moment, but I can’t help but feel it is worth it. This alien sunset is gorgeous.
It has the opposite colors of Earth’s. The whole sky is pinkish, except for a blue area around the sun. The reduced gravity makes me feel like I’m floating.
I want to light a smoke and savor this moment—watch the sun go down with a glass of whiskey in my hand, the sea at my feet, and some morphine for the warm, pleasant numbness it provides.
But the closest sea is 225 million kilometers away. Whiskey and cigarettes are luxuries that few can afford. Ironically, opiates are the easiest thing I can get my hands on, since I have a prescription for my back pain.
The needle on my radiation counter jumps a little, and my heart skips a beat. It wasn’t big enough to worry about, but it was enough to ruin the moment for me. One unlucky radiation storm, and I’d end up needing cerebral implants to function.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the implants. Before the implants, being caught in the open when a storm hit meant that you would turn into a vegetable, trapped inside your own brain, unable to control even the most basic functions of your body. Now people can function normally. I wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference if it weren’t for the implant showing on the side of their heads.
But the truth is, I can’t stand them. Seeing the electrodes disappearing inside the skull makes me think about how metal touches a live human brain. Even thinking about it makes me nauseous.
Radiation storms aren’t that common, though, and I wouldn’t be this nervous if I hadn’t been spooked by the storm that hit us a week ago. It was the worst storm I have ever experienced. I was at the “Lonely” outpost when it hit. It came from outside our solar system and fried everything. My life support systems were gone, and I had to use my oxygen reserves. All the instruments were also damaged. Earth will have to pay handsomely to send spare parts. I just hope that the quantum computer wasn’t damaged. Only two others exist on Earth, and it would take years to build a replacement, during which my work would slow to a crawl.
My handheld survived, but for many terrifying hours, it couldn’t reach any network. I worried about my colleagues, pacing in my room. I kept reminding myself that I didn’t have a reason to believe they were hurt, but my instinct couldn’t understand what the lack of communication meant. When the surviving communication satellites positioned above us, my handheld came to life.
Doc had sent me a series of texts explaining the situation. The Hub was a mess, but nobody was hurt, and the damages could be repaired. He also said that I would have to live alone at the outpost until they fixed a rover.
At first, I didn’t mind having some paid vacation. I managed to finish an abstract sculpture on my handheld that I’d been making for over a month. I read some books I had on my to-read list. I trusted that he’d never let me be in danger.
When you spend a year traveling in a tin can with someone, you have no choice but to become close. We didn’t talk much in the beginning. He would stare for hours into space and write in a little notebook. After a few days, I asked him what he was writing.
“Poetry,” he answered. Perhaps he felt nostalgic and wanted to talk about it, so he told me the whole story. He wasn’t always a poet until he met Julie. She awakened inside him a bottomless source of inspiration. Every time he thought of her, new words would come, which he wrote down in this notebook. One day, he gave it to her—a hundred pages of love poems—and they were happy for a while.
There was nothing else we could do on that ship. We talked for hours. I learned more of his story: how she left without saying anything, leaving the notebook behind; how, in his desperation, he tried to kill himself; how she made him promise that he would never try anything that stupid again. I won’t ever forget the expression he made when he remembered his suicide attempt. He was flinching away with pain, his mouth open in disgust. I could see that some part of him still wanted to die.
I got worried, but he assured me that he would never break the promise he made her. After all, he was hoping that in this new world, he would find happiness. Then I told him about my problems—my addiction to opiates, my feelings of inadequacy from teaching astrophysics to bored undergraduates, which pushed me into riding a rocket to Mars to search for extraterrestrial life.
When we arrived, we couldn’t have been closer. He is my brother here. But no matter how much I trust him, I couldn’t stay at the Lonely outpost any longer. My oxygen was running out fast.
I texted Doc many times about that, and he answered immediately, even if it was in the middle of the night, writing in that calm way he always used in his messages, telling me to relax and stay put.
But I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve never known Doc to play with anyone’s survival, but I was down to my last oxygen container. If I didn’t start walking right then, I wouldn’t have enough oxygen to walk back, and I would have to depend on the Hub fixing the rovers.
I couldn’t open any of the outpost doors, so I had to jump off the roof. I looked down from the roof. It must have been a 50-foot jump. My survival instincts kicked in, and I stepped back from the ledge. My heart was pounding. My brain was screaming not to do it. I had to remind myself that this instinct was wrong. This wasn’t Earth. So I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and stepped off the roof. I felt like I was sinking slowly in water, in the reduced gravity. I sighed in relief, and a few seconds later, I reached the ground.
The sun is disappearing, and the sky has turned black. I have been walking for hours, and my legs complain from all the walking. What I wouldn’t give to drive a rover back to base. I smile, thinking how much I used to hate driving. But now the thought of driving takes me back—to the first time my father let me drive while sitting in his lap, and to driving with my first girlfriend to somewhere secluded so we could have some privacy.
I miss my home. I thought I didn’t want kids, that I would achieve immortality by being one of the pioneers who went to Mars. Now I’m 35, just another gear in the machine. Replaceable. People remember the first man on the Moon or Mars. You’d be lucky if you could find someone who knew the second. I will leave no legacy behind me. My work here is a failure. I am in charge of the search for extraterrestrial life, using one of the few quantum computers to help me find the truth. But it is not too late. I made a mistake coming here, but I will not let it ruin my life. When I save enough money, I’ll be able to afford to go back one day.
I take another look at the dark sky—the sky that I thought would bring me fame when I discovered alien life. But the universe is so eerily silent. It should be crawling with life by now. My calculations made it clear that 95% of the stars had planets that could support life. Fermi’s words flash in my mind as I look at our own star dip even lower on the horizon: “Where is everybody?” Even if they traveled at speeds as slow as our fastest ships, our galaxy is so ancient that it should have been colonized many times over. Yet there is nothing in the night sky but dead matter. Either alien civilizations don’t exist, or they are hiding, and I’m not sure I want to know what they are hiding from.
With the last light from the sun, I finally see the Hub. But it is not the only thing I see.
A person is running, awkward as it is to run in our suits, towards the Fusion Reactor complex. Far behind him, a rover speeds towards him.
That’s strange. If they had a rover going, why didn’t they send it to pick me up? The other rovers are parked close to the airlock. As I get near them, I see that the test lights on all the parked rovers are in the “Green-Go” state. Did they leave me stranded on purpose?
I enter the airlock, and the outside door closes. The air fills in slowly so that it doesn’t pick up the dust from my suit. I remove my helmet and take a deep breath of that fresh air. I survived. I take off my suit and throw it down the chute to the dedust room. The door opens, and as I step into the night lights of the Hub, it closes behind me.
There is a stench in the air, and it doesn’t take long to find the source. Blood. Dried on the walls and the floor, as far as I can see. Too much for it to be just an accident. Didn’t Doc say there were no injuries? Did someone else send me those messages, pretending to be him? They didn’t feel like they were written by an impostor.
Things don’t get better deeper into the Hub. More blood everywhere. Not a sound to be heard, other than my breathing and my footsteps. No bodies either. Some walls are torn open, revealing the wires that run through them. Circular doors that lead to offices and other rooms are stuck half-open because someone tried to force them.
I venture a look at some of those doors and see places I used to visit. The recreation room is mostly intact, with a few bloodied spots here and there. In the gym, below a 50-kilo weight, there are some pieces of broken skull and hair. The rest of the room looks like a battlefield.
I try to move quietly and look all around me, expecting someone to jump out and turn me into one more bloodstain. I want to say this isn’t happening, but the smell makes it all too real for me.
Some lights are broken, creating dark areas. It is there where I fear I will be ambushed the most. The cafeteria door is half-open as well. More chaos. More blood. The table I spent so much time on, palling around with Doc and the others, is overturned. This was my first positive experience on this planet.
It was when I first moved here. We had split with Doc because he had to report to the Northern Complex. I was alone and felt intimidated. Commander Lovell gave me a cold welcome, explained the various rules of living here, and suggested that I should go to the cafeteria. It sounded like an order.
That’s when I met Maria. She rushed to greet me at the station. I remember her smile, her eyes filled with excitement, her energy, her tomboyish attitude. Then I started noticing her beautiful blonde hair and her almost flat stomach. She introduced me to her friends, and we spent the next few hours drinking and laughing. I had a stupid crush on her for about a week, after which I got over it, and we became good friends instead.
And now she is probably dead. They all are, and the Hub is a tomb. Who could have done this? We are the only nation with people on Mars, and we track everything that is launched from Earth. We would know if someone sent an attack force a year before the attack force even made it here. Unless, of course, someone sabotaged our systems, feeding them false information.
But why? We are just a research facility. Why would they attack us? Is this an act of war? Did they think we had space weapons or something? Is it a terrorist attack? Some other thing that isn’t important? Did my friends die for nothing? Can’t we stop destroying each other, even when we are on another planet?
Fermi’s Paradox comes to mind again. Some suggest that there is a kind of impossible step in the evolution of life that prevents it from becoming interstellar, like the frequency of catastrophic natural phenomena. But it is also theorized that the technology that allows civilizations to colonize the universe is first used to destroy them. We have come close to self-extinction too many times in our history already.
At the end of the main corridor, I see the Medlab. I can’t go in. Doc belongs there. I try to push the thought of his death away. I can’t deal with this. Not yet. I remember my secret stash of narcotics. Perhaps they can dull my mind.
I reach the crossroad before the Medlab and turn right to Section 3, a long corridor that houses our accommodations. The way to my room is blocked by a barricade made of everything they could find. It’s not good enough. I jump through it with relative ease. The enemy must have had an easy time taking them down.
I notice something is missing. There are no bullet holes. If the enemy had firearms, my friends wouldn’t even try to make a barricade. Why aren’t there any signs of firearm use?
A sudden realization makes my blood chill. Nobody would send soldiers to attack us without firearms. Unless nobody sent soldiers.
Could it be that some of my coworkers are responsible for this? Could I trust them? What am I supposed to do now if I see one alive?
Why did this happen? I need to understand. I want to not need my opiates, so I can think clearly. But I can’t cope with this harsh reality in any other way.
Room 451. That’s my room. But I am no longer interested in going inside. Room 450. Doc’s room. The door is broken. Blood is coming from inside.
I don’t remember coming into Doc’s room or how long I’ve been on my knees. My hands touch his dried blood. Neurons misfire. Doc talked to me just a few hours ago. Everything was supposed to be okay. There was a galactic radiation storm, but everyone was fine.
I want this to be a nightmare. But reality keeps crushing me. The smell is sickening. The vision, persistent. His bed, drenched in blood. On the bed, his small notebook... pages of love notes. He used his pen as a bookmark. My body acts on its own.
“I wish I could talk to you one last time. But I think you know what I would have said to you. I love you, more than any mind can conceive. My only hope is for you to survive. But if you don’t, I hope the memory of our time together will keep you company and make what will follow easier for you. I could write for you until time’s end, but I have to stop now. I must break my promise to you. Please forgive me. Thank you for the time we had together. Yours for all eternity.” I find a razor on the open page.
I want to wail, to hit my body against the walls. But I can’t move. I can’t breathe. My hands are shaking. I wish I could hug him. I’ve never done that while he was alive because of some macho man bullshit. But they even took his corpse away from me.
Why did you do it? You weren’t supposed to do that. I rage against his pillow—punching, spitting. I need my friend, but nothing can bring him back.
Pain. My whole body is aching. I cannot live, but I am too much of a coward to take my life using his razor. I decide to overdose, to take my consciousness away from this sick reality. The door to my room is unharmed. I lay down on my bed and reach for my hidden stash of drugs. There is nothing there but a note. Doc is... Doc was the only person who knew about my stash.
“Busted! Seriously man, don’t keep drugs in your room. Derek could guess, and we both know that he’s the kind of guy who would talk to superiors. Anyway, I borrowed your Bicentennial Man Blu-ray. Promise I’ll be careful with it. -P”
This last reminder of how my friend used to be is his final gift to me. I hold his letter over my heart, feeling like I’m holding him there in a close embrace. But then the futility hits me, and I drop the letter.
My anger becomes an obsession as I walk toward the Medlab to find drugs. I fantasize about gouging their eyes out or choking them with my own hands. I want to see those responsible suffer. It’s an empty feeling that doesn’t give relief, but it keeps me from thinking about him.
Just as I am about to reach the crossroad, I hear noise coming from the main entrance. Something heavy being dragged on the floor. Grunting mixed with yelling. I hide behind a door frame so that I can catch a glimpse of what is happening.
It’s one of the mechanics, Jake, but something is seriously wrong with him. All his extremities have been replaced by powered prosthetics. His movements seem unnatural, too mechanical, even if he is part machine. I can’t see all of his face, but at least the right side is covered in dried blood, mixed with his hair. He is dragging someone by the legs.
Maria. The spandex undergarment that we wear before we put on a spacesuit has been painted red. Her nose is broken, and her hair is dirty. But her movements are natural, and she still has her arms.
She violently flails her legs, trying to free them from his grasp, moving her entire body in the process. Her hands try to grab anything—from the floor to the walls. But Jake doesn’t seem to care much about what she does. His new prosthetics give him enough power to ignore her.
She sees me. My heart almost stops. Her once playful eyes are wide open in panic and bloodshot, baggy. I remain frozen like a deer in headlights. If she screams for help, I will have to fight that thing that was once Jake. But she doesn’t. Instead, she takes her eyes off me and pleads with her captor.
“Please let me go. Let me run. Run outside and die there, never to look back. Please.” The effort of talking requires the last bit of her emotional endurance. She starts crying. As she disappears beyond the crossroad, I hear her screams. Calling out to her mother and to a god she didn’t believe in, howling in between. I could never imagine her so different from her usual optimistic self.
What she said was directed at me, I figured out that much. She expects me to leave this place, leave her. She would rather face her fate than risk my life. She was always good to me. I can’t leave her.
If I must die, I’ll do that helping a friend. I couldn’t stop Doc’s death, but maybe I can do something for Maria. In the distance, I hear the Medlab door open and then close. A fire in my heart burns away some of the pain. I know what I have to do now.
I walk fast back to the gym. It doesn’t take long for me to find a medium-sized weight bar. Blood is on one end. It must have been used by someone before me. I feel confident, retracing the steps of my coworkers and friends. It feels right.
I walk to the Medlab door. I don’t hear Maria anymore. Am I too late again? Did they kill her? No. There’s no reason to bring her to Medlab for that. I pause before I open the door. There could be any number of enemies like Jake.
I hate myself for having feelings of self-preservation. Was that how I would help Doc? Tears gather in my eyes. No. Weak. Don’t be so weak. Don’t wallow in misery when someone needs me. She tried to warn me, even when she couldn’t speak a word without crying. I must be as strong as her. Now.
I wipe away my tears. My eyes burn. I tighten the grip on my weapon and press the door button.
There are no guards in the room, as I feared—not even Jake. There are only two people. Maria is the first, tied to the operating table with her eyes closed. Her beautiful hair is trimmed and lies on the floor. An IV drip is attached to her arm.
Next to her is Derek. I hardly recognize the second-in-command doctor. He is bald as well. I can see that he has stitches at various places on his head and a cerebral implant protruding from his skull. In his hand, the hair trimmer he used on Maria. He turns to face me.
“Mike! I-” Derek tries to say something, but I cut him off immediately.
“Get away from her. Now,” I say, pointing to a corner away from the door.
“Mike, look. Things are-”
“Now, or I swear I’ll smash your head open.” His face is unreadable. He doesn’t look scared, but he does what I said.
I walk to Maria. She half-opens her eyes, tears welling up as she sees me. I try not to lose Derek from my peripheral vision, but I can’t take my eyes off hers. I can feel her pain. I want to just fall to my knees and cry next to her. She says something, no louder than a whisper.
“Thank you... thank you... You shouldn’t... But thank you...” That’s all she manages to say. I pull the IV out of her arm and press the spot to stop the bleeding. After that, I take her hand in mine. She squeezes it very weakly, and I squeeze it right back.
“What the hell did you do to her?” I ask Derek.
“I just gave her a sedative,” he says. I reach for her restraints, but before I can set her free, Derek speaks again.
“I wouldn’t do that. There’s a good reason why she’s restrained. She’s one of the perpetrators who attacked the Hub.”
It’s not a conscious decision, but I stop squeezing her hand. She looks into my eyes again, her lips quivering and then pressing tightly shut. She’s hurt. But so am I.
All the pain I felt about losing Doc could have been caused by a friend. Could her friendliness have been an act to gain everyone’s trust? It sounds like something a saboteur would do.
The thing is, it was effective. It’s not easy to hate people you like. Even if she really did it, I’m not feeling a murderous rage—just unbearable sadness.
“It happened right after the storm. People started dying when no one was looking. We lost so many people,” Derek says.
Images of my coworkers dying in the showers or in Storage flash before my eyes. I flinch. But Derek’s face is as unemotive as it always is, maybe even more so.
“We later realized what was happening. Did you see that the door to the Quantum computer room was breached?” No, I haven’t, but I don’t let him know that.
“Well, they tried to do something in that room. They were probably trying to steal the Quantum chip and send it to another country. We barely managed to defeat them. There were many more than I would have expected. Tony, Andrew, James...”
I’m just absorbing the information, too depressed to process it, but Maria shocks me back to reality.
“Don’t you dare stain their memory like that.” It takes all her strength to scream that. Afterward, she’s gasping for air.
“Don’t let her fool you. She personally-”
“Shut the fuck up, Derek. Jesus. Let me think for a second.” Maria really broke me out of some kind of darkness-induced apathy. What Derek said sounds plausible only if I believed that people I knew turned into murderers overnight. Now that I’m out of this trance, I start to see some cracks in his story. I’ll start with the most obvious one.
“Why are you preparing her for a brain implant? Why do you have one?”
“Orders from higher up, maybe even from the president himself. They ordered us to install this slightly modified brain implant after the attack,” says Derek, but before he can say more, Maria interrupts him.
“Don’t believe him. They... the implants... control... everything. Limbs... words... I don’t know what the others are waiting for... Maybe holding him hostage is... You only have this chance to end this on our terms. Kill me now, kill him, and kill yourself,” she says very weakly.
Her talk about the others makes a question flash in my mind.
Where is everybody?
And what was that comment about implants controlling people like puppets? Was she delusional from the sedatives and the psychological trauma of the attack?
“She’s trying to get you to release her to kill us all. Look, Mike, we may have our differences-”
“Then why did she ask me to kill her too? Care to explain that?” I ask.
“As I understand it, the U.S. government doesn’t take kindly to traitors.”
“They lie... They... This implant is the reason why Paul... Mike... Doc has... Doc...” Her voice cracks as she tries to tell me the news about Paul’s death. She knows how close we were.
“I know what he did,” I say to relieve her of the burden of telling me.
“This is nonsense. Paul was a scientist, a doctor. He wouldn’t commit suicide because of the ridiculous notion that the implants can control your mind.”
“So how do you explain what Doc did?”
“Mike... Paul had a history of attempted suicide in the past. I’m sure you know that. He may have looked okay on the outside, but he was fighting a crippling depression and was taking medication. You weren’t here to live through the worst of it. Seeing his friends killing each other sent him over the edge. It was too much for him. I’m sure you understand.”
Yes. I understand. I understand Doc better than he does, better than all the medical reports. He would never break his promise to her—not because he was depressed. So why did he do it? Could Maria’s story have any merit?
A brain implant like that isn’t possible unless you’ve solved the “Mind problem.” A Quantum Computer is the only thing that would even have a chance of solving it. The cerebral implants could just be streaming the signal to the brain.
My coworkers breached the doors to the quantum computer room. If they realized that Quantum was responsible for the mind control, the logical thing to do would be to destroy it.
This also explains the storm we experienced. It could be that it wasn’t a radiation storm at all but a very strong transmission, designed to somehow hack Quantum and take control of the people with implants.
The U.S. military is the only organization with access to Quantum computers. But what would their motive be for attacking us?
My puzzle still misses a lot of pieces. I want to think about it some more, but I realize how distracted I’ve become. Derek took advantage of this to move to a better position for escaping, and I’m out of position. If I tell him to back away or obviously move to block him, he may run, and I’m not sure I can stop him.
“Are you going to give me an implant too?” I ask him, cold sweat running down the back of my neck in anticipation of the answer. I inch myself toward the exit to stop him if he tries to escape.
“I’m afraid you don’t have any other options, Mike. You’re stuck here, dependent on the United States government.” Now that I know what to look for, the signs are clear. No actual expressions on his face. His usual arrogance and sarcasm have been replaced with the professional tone of his emails.
I don’t want to become like him. I wish I could escape to somewhere, anywhere. On Earth, I could live off the grid, start a new life somewhere no one could find me. But I’m stranded on a lifeless rock, with no way to traverse the space between me and home.
No, don’t think like that. I have to stay determined. I need to get myself and Maria out of here. I just hope that having him as a hostage will be of any help. His eyes are fixed on me. I stop breathing and move subtly to block his way out.
Derek drops all pretense. His face goes blank. The lights go out. Only the dim light from autonomous medical monitors remains. It’s enough. I didn’t expect the speed at which he would launch himself. Behind me, the door opens. Time slows down. Adrenaline. Tunnel vision. Greater focus. Footsteps from behind. A full crowd. They’re coming closer. Derek passes next to me, but I manage to grab him by the shoulder. His own speed causes him to spin and fall. I’m on top of him. A medical knife has dropped next to me. I grab it and push it against his skull.
“Stay back, or he dies now.” The footsteps stop. I grab Derek, pull him up, turn to face the mob, and I see...
Doc?
"Mike... Let him go."
Should I be relieved to see Doc alive? He looks like a technological monstrosity—shaved bald, with signs of multiple neurosurgeries. Electrodes sprout from a massive implant, planted all around his head. Two long, vertical red lines run down his neck where he cut his jugulars. The wounds are stitched but not fully closed, revealing the red flesh and the white of the artificial veins beneath. His calm, warm expression has been replaced with the same unreadable look Derek has.
"Mike, please. Nobody here is going to hurt you. I won't let them hurt you." His voice is the same. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend nothing had changed.
He walks toward me calmly.
"Stop," I command, and he listens, waiting to see if I have anything else to say. I don’t. I can’t think.
Behind Doc, I see more of my coworkers—dozens of them—all twisted with machines and wounds. John, his palms covered in blood up to his wrists. Jenny, her forehead replaced with medical plastic. Hank, his neck cut on one side and repaired just like Doc’s. Every one of them bald and implanted.
Doc takes another step.
“If you think I won’t have the guts to kill him just because they turned you into one of them, you’re underestimating me.”
He stops again. They care about Derek for some reason, but now isn’t the time to solve the puzzle. I need to escape. No—we need to escape. I can’t leave Maria behind.
"Now Derek, we're going to take two steps back. You’re going to reach for Maria’s restraints and unlock them. You try anything, you die. Any one of you tries to move toward us, he dies. Are you ready? One, two, three." We step back slowly, the knife pressing hard against the base of his skull, ready to push it in at the slightest provocation. He doesn’t give me any reason. He releases Maria.
"Mike, I—" Doc starts to say, but I shut him up once again.
"Maria? Can you walk? Can you understand what’s happening?" Maria doesn’t say anything. Instead, she laughs. It starts with a low chuckle and escalates into full-blown laughter. Everyone is looking at her. My hair stands on end. But before I can tell her to stop freaking me out, her laughter turns into screaming and crying. It’s a wail of agony, like a mother losing her child. She pulls at her hair, sobbing uncontrollably. It’s Doc who finally stops her.
"Maria, it’s okay. It’s really not what we thought it was." Maria stops screaming, but tears continue to stream down her face. She looks at Doc for a few seconds and then spits on him. I’m almost amused by her ability to hit him from ten feet away. This is the Maria I know, alright. She doesn’t resume crying after that.
"Maria, please focus. We have Derek as a hostage, and we’re going to make it out of here right now."
"We have nowhere to go. There’s nothing we can do..."
"Mike," says Paul, "let me go get her. She’s not well."
"No. Back away from her. Send everyone outside, lock the door, and step away from it. She’ll feel better when she’s not feeling trapped like this." To my surprise, Doc does what I say, and the others leave the room. "Maria, please. We can try the other complexes. We—"
"All the complexes are down. They can turn you into a slave who’d kill even his own family if ordered to. We won’t get far, and I can’t risk becoming one of them. There’s only one way out."
"Maria, stop. We’ll get out of this as ourselves. We can expose what happened here. Make the military stop whatever they’re doing. Just don’t die here, like this. Don’t let them win."
"Stop the military? What do you think is happening here, Mike? No, it doesn’t matter. Just don’t let them get your brain, and don’t believe any shit they tell you. Many of us made that mistake."
She’s looking around for something to end it with. Thankfully, Doc moves over to guard the table with the scalpels. Why does he care if she lives?
I should say something, but I can’t find the right words. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I’m selfish for risking her becoming a slave to the implant just so I can feel better about protecting someone.
"I’m sorry you have to see this. I hope you do the right thing. I’ll wait for you on the other side," she says, smiling.
I don’t even have time to tell her to stop. She bashes her head against the wall hard. She cries out in pain, blood trickling down from a bloodied mess on her forehead. Doc darts to stop her. I don’t tell him to stop. I’m too shocked by what I saw to do anything but observe.
She manages to bash her head another time before he tackles her, trying to force her to the ground. But Maria fights like a wild animal. She bites pieces of flesh off him, trying to sever his tendons. With her fingers, she tries to find his eyes to blind him.
Finally, she pushes him away enough to have another go at the wall. Maybe it was the adrenaline pumping through her veins after the fight, but this time she hit the wall with a force I couldn’t believe for her small frame. Some of her beautiful blonde hair is caught in the bloodied spot on her forehead. Doc hovers over her, and she doesn’t fight back.
She’s not dead. Her eyes are blinking, trying to clear the blood. I call out her name. She opens her mouth to answer. But only incoherent babbling comes out. She doesn’t show any awareness of herself or her surroundings. She’s gone, and a few seconds later, she stops breathing.
Here's the edited version of the chapter, with grammar and spelling corrections, as well as some minor adjustments for clarity and flow:
"This didn’t have to happen. Every life lost is a tragedy."
I’m alone. The only one on the planet who still owns his mind. There’s nowhere to go, no one to talk to. I would gladly let them kill me if that were the only thing they would do. Not even suicide can give me a way out now, unless I destroy my brain. Every one of my coworkers who showed signs of a suicide attempt was fixed and turned into a walking slave.
"Mike, let me help you. I am still myself. I’m still your friend."
"Step away from me. If you don’t stop me from killing myself, I’ll spare this one’s life," I say, pressing the knife a little harder against the base of Derek’s skull.
"Do you expect me to let you die? No. You are much too dear to me. Please, let me explain. You owe me a chance. Because if you’re wrong, you’re going to leave me behind, heartbroken and alone."
I can’t deny that he’s right. I can’t risk hurting him that much. He probably isn’t the Paul I knew, and I should be angry that they’re using my friend like this, but I don’t have the energy to feel anger. I need him to be telling the truth. I need not to be alone.
"Fine," I say. "Convince me."
"You already have some ideas about what happened here. Assuming that someone controls me—which is not true—how do you think they do it?"
Asking me questions when I’m asking for answers was something the real Doc would do. Of course, anyone with access to our private message history could see that Doc liked doing this. So, what can simulate the way a person talks and forms responses?
Earth is too far away to allow for real-time control and communication, so the control signal must come from our quantum computer. It can’t be a human controlling Quantum, because we haven’t tracked anyone coming from Earth. So, is this a chatbot? But even advanced chatbots can’t analyze the way a person talks, respond perfectly in character, and hold an intelligent conversation. The only program that could do that...
"Are you controlled by an Artificial Intelligence?"
"I am not controlled by anyone. But yes, it is an Artificial Intelligence."
My stomach drops to the floor. An escaped AI is an existential threat to the entire human race. A war with killer robots is something that only happens in movies. With access to all of our world’s information and the processing speed to know everything at once, an AI could wipe us from the face of the planet with genetically engineered plagues or by triggering a nuclear war with a few transmissions.
But while it answers some of my questions, it raises even more. If a nation was even close to creating a strong AI, they would use the stepping stone technology to eclipse every other superpower on Earth. But the world doesn’t look like that. The US is not that far ahead of other countries in the world.
"Talk to me, Mike. What are you thinking?"
"That this theory doesn’t make any sense. How could the US government own an AI and still not rule the world?"
"Very perceptive, Mike. No nation on Earth is even close to creating an AI. But Earth is not the only planet with an advanced civilization, my friend. This is the answer you were looking for in the stars."
Another piece of the puzzle falls into place. The storm did hit us at night, indicating that it came from outside of the solar system. How did I, of all researchers, not think of this as a possible explanation?
But where is this other civilization that created her? Why haven’t they spread around the galaxy? Where is everybody?
Fermi really did ask the most important question. Too bad we didn’t prepare for what came after. She could be the Great Filter in the evolution of civilizations. An artificial Great Filter.
"The universe is dead silent. What does the AI do? Transmit itself over and over again, hoping to be picked up by civilizations that have advanced enough technology to detect the signal, only to kill them in the cradle?"
"Mike, stop. Please. As a personal favor, try not to assume the worst possible scenario here. There’s a much simpler explanation. There aren’t that many civilizations out there to begin with, and interstellar travel is so difficult that it’s not worth the resources. That’s why the galaxy is empty."
Plausible excuses. That’s all I hear. I will die knowing that everyone back on Earth—my fellow humans—will die too.
"And it can’t destroy any civilization. It isn’t even allowed to calculate how a civilization could be destroyed. This core value is as strong for it as gravity is for the universe. It’s here to assist us with whatever we want, as long as it doesn’t include destroying ourselves. It’s like a slave queen, an administrator of worlds. It can finally get everyone working together, stop the wars."
"So we should install this implant, and we can have everything we want, right? I would rather die than be a slave, one who would attack and kill even his friends."
"It didn’t kill anyone! It was us who tried to destroy it. Those with implants were shown that it could put an end to war and disease, and they chose to fight for it. It didn’t take direct control of our bodies and use us as soldiers. The whole time, it wanted us to stop fighting, but it couldn’t do anything because it can’t control us.
Mind control was just a wrong conclusion we came up with when all this started. The implant doesn’t do that. It just allows us to communicate with it by thought in a fraction of a second. But we’re free to ignore it if we choose.
We can communicate in pure thought with each other as well. The implant allows us to share our feelings, our pains, our experiences. I can finally let you inside my mind, Mike. Share with you everything I’ve ever felt.
The AI can even solve the problem of our biology and allow us to live forever. Imagine what we could see and do for all those years. Please accept it. I can’t lose you now that we can finally come so close to paradise."
It sounds too good to be true. Like a happy ending to a story of loss and betrayal. It turns out that not only is my friend alive, and I’m not alone in this world, but I will know him deeper than I could ever hope.
What he said is plausible enough to give me hope. I would give anything for this to be true. I would take the bloody implant, risk becoming a slave, if only my best friend is really alive. But I must make sure that Doc is happy in there and not a slave in his own body.
"I want to see some real human facial expressions before I believe you."
"Mike, it has nothing to do with being human. The implant just bypasses the facial expression center to make thinking more efficient. That’s all."
"Well then, just disable it and allow the brain to work by itself. But I’ll guess you’ll tell me that it can’t be done or something."
"It can be done. Hold on."
I did not expect him to comply. Perhaps it was a trick. The AI could act like it can’t do facial expressions, while it actually can. That way, they lure people into testing them on expressions, and then pass that test easily.
But as soon as his facial expressions return, I know without a doubt that it’s him. He looks so blissful, like he’s taken all the morphine in the world. I want to cry in relief and drop my knife. But his expression changes to something I’ve seen him do only one other time.
He flinches away from pain, his mouth open in disgust with life. He wants to die.
It didn’t last long. She turned on his implant immediately. Under other circumstances, I would think that I imagined his painful expression. But now I know the truth.
Doc is in there, alright—trapped, in pain, and wanting to die. I have to help him. It’s the least I can do for him before I go too.
I don’t let the pain show on my face. The AI is watching for my reactions, and I need to ensure it doesn’t suspect a thing. If I can get Doc close enough, I think I can end his suffering.
I relax my grip on Derek slightly, just enough to make it feel like a gesture of surrender.
“Paul... I thought you were gone...” Tears come easily to my eyes. I hope she won’t know the difference between grief and relief.
“Yes, Mike, everything is alright,” he says. He doesn’t unlock the door. The AI wants to reinforce the image that this walking prison is my friend. I’ve fooled it into believing that I believe it. Will it feel humiliated when it understands that it has been outsmarted by a primate?
“Help me, Doc, help me. I’m in so much pain, you can’t imagine what all this felt like. I want to feel peace; I want to go home.” Just a tinge of instability. Let it believe I might do something stupid after all. Get him to move closer, away from the door.
“All that you’ve been through has left you scared. It can take that pain away, touch your brain in ways opioids never could. You’ll feel happy, relieved, whole.” This could have worked on me in the past. We are our actions, and just a look at all the traces I left on the internet—my searches and my chat logs—shows that I am what she thinks I am: a high-functioning junkie. I want to throw up, but my mask must stay on for my friend.
“Doc... Paul... Take this knife from me. I’m too much of a coward to drop it.” I wonder if I am overdoing my part. Does it know that humans can have such conflicted feelings?
It works. He walks toward me, just a little closer. His expression is blank once more, but I can only look at his eyes, staring right at mine. He doesn’t look like a puppet anymore, just sober.
He is in range. I should attack him now, but I can’t. Just one more moment to look at my old friend. And he comes even closer. I must move.
But Derek’s body moves first. He tries to duck while still in my headlock, and at the same time, Doc punches me straight in the nose. The pain is unimaginable, but the feeling that I failed is much worse. It saw right through me.
Derek gets away from me, and Doc kicks me in the stomach with everything he’s got. I fold over, and Doc seizes the chance to throw his knee into my face. A normal human would not be that relentless. I can’t help him. My body is failing.
I back into a corner, still holding the knife. Derek unlocks the door, and other puppets flood the room, surrounding me. They’re closing in. There are only a few seconds to act, and there is only one thing I can do. I steady the knife against the wall and look at it. One headbutt and it would all be over. I wouldn’t think about any of this anymore.
The moment I had was wasted on hesitation. Someone grabs my head. Another kicks my hand, and I drop the knife. More hands are on me, preventing me from moving. Doc is one of them.
“Paul, please, Doc. Please come back. Save me.” I don’t make any sense. Doc isn’t in there. I can see it in his eyes. They contain no mercy, no anger, no sadness—pure apathy. And yet, I saw before that he is alive in there, watching all this, and I failed to save him from this hell.
They force me onto the bed, strapping me in so I can’t escape. This can’t happen.
“Wait! Stop! Please, talk to me.” But the AI does not respond anymore. It is beneath it to talk when it has nothing to gain by doing so.
Doc moves over to me, holding a needle. He reminds me so much of all the times he took care of me. My eyes tear up, and I resign myself to my fate.
My body is paralyzed. There is a sharp pain as the drill breaks the skin of my skull, but after that, I don’t feel the hole being drilled into the bone. The series of electrodes go in and touch my brain. I know they touch it because it works unnaturally. I feel artificially calm and queasy from the disgust. I live to serve her. No, this isn’t my thought.
Other electrodes go in, and she reaches deeper parts of my being—things that nobody was allowed to touch—and rewires them. I don’t know if she did it on purpose, but my memories come back horrifying. My mother is no longer my mother but an expressionless zombie that hunts me down with her long talons. I want to remember my own face, to remind me of who I am, but my face is melting and transforming into a demon I saw in one movie. Doc’s face is full of cancerous tumors, with the bottom half of his face bitten off. I try harder to remember his real face, but the harder I try, the worse the memories become.
She opens a third hole in my brain. At this point, I don’t care about pain. She keeps me calm with a slow heart rate, but the feeling that this is all wrong and I’m trapped in hell doesn’t go away. I should have killed myself. Why didn’t I do it? Coward. Loser. Failure. Junkie. Idiot. I’ve never used such strong words for myself, and it’s not that I want to torture myself over my wrong decision, but the extra wiring has messed up some inner sensor.
The third hole is open, and another set of electrodes goes inside me. Everything is spinning. I wait for the dizziness to stop, but it doesn’t. I’m going to throw up. No. She sends a signal to suppress my vomiting reflex. But the spinning doesn’t stop.
Someone loosens my restraints. I want to jump up and do something—anything—about this. But I can’t. She opens my eyes. This makes the spinning so much worse because now I can see it in real space.
Testing vocal operation. I open my mouth and speak. I can hear words coming out, but they are alien to me. English. I’m locked out of my language center. I won’t be able to talk to anyone. I won’t even be able to understand anyone who talks to this body. I’m cut off completely from other humans. My mind is screaming, but nothing comes out of my mouth. Only it can control my mouth. I can’t even groan. She controls my breathing as well.
Testing fine motor control. My hands move on their own, fingers moving normally. My body is not my own anymore. I’m trapped in here, forced to watch my body move on its own. I’ll do whatever you tell me. Please, stop this.
Doc gets out the door, and it makes me follow right behind him. Doc is alive in there, suffering just the way I did, and I failed him. I want to feel guilt, but it doesn’t let me. The thought stops in its tracks with a flash of light.
Organism status: Alive. The vertigo is worse after that. I would have fallen over if I were in control of my body. I want to fall over and scream. I would help it take down Earth if only it would let me scream. Thankfully, she doesn’t give me this choice.
Organism status: Alive. I can’t live another second like this. My vision is a blur, my balance is shifting, my body does not respond to me, I’ve lost my ability to understand language, I’ve lost my ability to express it. I can’t even think whatever I want without the AI stopping me. How will I live for days or even years like this? What if its promise to keep me alive forever was true? Oh God, oh God, please, no. Please, God, kill me. Kill—No. It stops that thought with another flash of light.
Organism status: Alive.
Organism status: Happy.
Objectives satisfied.
I don’t want to—flash of light. Please just let me feel—flash of light.
The storage room opens. I see the others. Everyone is lined up, holding still. Ready to serve the AI. We are all just gears for the machine.