CHAPTER 39

ICARUS

CAN WE ESCAPE?

Icarus now had a million things racing through his head. Lex had self-destructed, and he was almost certain that it was because one of the Atua had discovered his base. So they couldn’t return there.

They needed a way to escape from the planet now. They couldn’t duck somewhere and hide. The Atua would be coming in force to find them.

If an alien snuck its way onto one of Icarus’s planets and injured some of the locals, even if it was in self-defense, he would use every resource within his power to find the alien. Icarus assumed the Atua would do the same with him and Ship.

The two of them would be found. It was just a matter of time before they got caught.

And even if they somehow managed to get into orbit, it wasn’t like they had a chance; every single one of the alien spacecraft would be chasing after them for as long as it took.

Icarus thought about escaping into space. Where would he go? If they raced to the nearest system Atlas or Trillion controlled, all he’d be doing was leading them there.

They probably already knew which star systems were under their control. But still it wasn’t worth the risk.

Even if he made it all the way back to his planet, Titan, he wasn’t assured rescue. He didn’t know what sorts of weaponry they had.

His mind was getting too ahead of things; he needed to focus on his immediate problem. “Ship, any ideas on how we can get off this rock without getting caught?”

“How screwed do you think we are?”

“What do you mean?”

“If we get caught, do we end up in an alien prison?”

“I suspect it’s much worse than that. They’ve already shown their will to trap an entire planet in a simulated prison—in the metaverse. I think they’ll trap us into some computer, extract all the knowledge we have. We’ll either tell them everything we know or they’ll torture it out of us.”

The sound of being tortured for the rest of time was something Ship did not want to deal with. “I would rather self-destruct.”

“Me, too,” Icarus said. “So given we are in a situation where we either escape or die, how do we escape?”

Ship pulled them both toward the bottom of the sea where they hid underneath a rock. The rock wouldn’t hide them too well, but it was better than nothing.

“Give me access to your android,” Ship said as he offered his other hand to increase the bandwidth between the two of them. “I’m turning off all our magnetic fields. I’m gonna try and make us as invisible as possible.”

While Ship altered Icarus’s matrix, Icarus began passively scanning the area around them. Something seemed odd; there were more fish in the immediate sea. There was a massive school of swimming creatures moving in deliberate patterns. They were moving in a corkscrew pattern clockwise around where Lex had just exploded.

“They’re searching for us,” Icarus said. “We probably have ten minutes before we’re spotted. We need to get out of here.”

“We can’t move anywhere. If they’re scanning this area, then they’ll have sensors above the water. They’ll be able to detect our avatars moving through the water.”

Icarus wasn’t comfortable with the idea of staying right there waiting to be caught. “Do we have any squid-looking ANTs nearby? Can they take our matrices?”

“That’s it,” Ship said excitedly. “We can leave in the same way we came.”

Icarus knew that sounds of excitement in Ship’s voice; he had a plan. They didn’t have access to processing power to change their playback speed. So Icarus wasn’t willing to slow things down by having Ship explain his idea. “You have a plan?”

“I have a plan. Do you have any ANTs left?”

“I do.”

Icarus watched as Ship took control of his avatar and began releasing all seven of the ANTs still inside of his hands.

They began racing out in random directions away from where they were right now.

“I need to disconnect your matrix,” Ship said. “I need to replace it with a Lex.”

“Do it.”

Icarus was switched off.

Ship knew there were hidden ANTs nearby, ANTs that looked and acted like alien fish. They were meant to be passively searching the area, looking for intruders. One particular ANT had the perfect-size mouth to fit both his and Icarus’s matrices in it.

Ship took a gamble, but because signals didn’t travel very far in water, he hoped he wasn’t broadcasting their exact location. The ANTs he’d just released were sending out signals to attract one of the swimming ANTs. In theory, there should be at least one nearby.

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While Ship waited for a mystery ANT that may or may not come, Ship began programming the exact steps the small robotic fish needed to do.

Icarus’s avatar was currently building a small Lex-based AI. Ship knew from experience that giving instructions to Lex was marginally better than trying to preprogram things for every possible outcome.

He worked as quickly as he could, trying not to overprescribe things but also conscious of the fact that a small Lex matrix struggled with ambiguity.

Ship nearly jumped with joy when a small squid-looking robot with tentacles approached them both and gave off its authentication codes.

Ship sensed the alien robots in the water looking for them were nearby. He estimated they were thirty seconds away from being found.

His planning was going to have to be enough. He ejected Icarus’s matrix and shoved it into the squid’s mouth, then pulled out a small data clip from Icarus’s head and slid that into a small port on one of the robot’s tentacles. That data clip would install Lex and tell the swimming android what to do next.

Taking a deep breath, he ejected his own matrix.

The two avatars of Ship and Icarus were on a preprogrammed schedule. As soon as they were seen, they were to dart off in the opposite direction, swimming as fast as their printed bodies could take them. Ship expected them to be caught. Ship expected the aliens to converge on them. That was okay because, once captured, they were programmed to self-destruct in a big explosion. Ship hoped that would be enough to convince the Atua to stop looking. Or at the very least, cause enough chaos that the squid holding their matrices could hide.

The alien cephalopod reached out one of its arms and grabbed Ship’s matrix. It swam in a natural pattern, scattering from rock to rock in the general direction Ship wanted it to go.

Lex controlled the robot as it slowly made its way across the ocean, traveling a good few days. About an hour into the journey, it felt an surge of pressure. It didn’t know it at the time, but that was the avatars of Icarus and Ship exploding.

At one point, it was attacked by a large swimming fish. Lex had to hide under a rock until that larger fish left it alone.

It was a long and slow journey. But Lex was under strict instructions not to raise any suspicion. So during the night it pretended to sleep under a rock before beginning the journey again in the morning.

After five days of steady progress, Lex finally made it to the hidden base.

It was camouflaged to look like a rock. Ship’s original plan had been to use this as the main base of operation for when they were exploring the nearby country. They were still months away from using it though, so it was tiny, just a small fabricator.

Lex hopped inside and immediately began cannibalizing the base to manufacture a small eleph-ANT. Lex turned itself off once the process had commenced; it was under strict orders not to use any more power than it should—because the risk of getting caught was too high.

Six hours later, Lex was switched back on.

It was now in control of an eleph-ANT. A small eleph-ANT. Lex again was instructed to leave as soon as the work was complete.

But Lex reviewed the sensor data. There were a lot more fish out in the water nearby. It assumed the only reason there were a lot of fish around was the aliens were scanning the area.

Lex had a decision to make: run now or hide.

It didn’t believe running now had a high probability of success. The eleph-ANT had a massive contraption on top of its head, so it would not be a good swimmer.

In order to escape, Lex had to swim up two hundred meters before reaching the surface. That was a lot of ground to cover.

Lex didn’t want to fail. It didn’t want to die.

Lex powered everything off for an hour. It knew the camouflage was good, but all the electronics on board the eleph-ANT would probably give away its position.

One hour later, Lex awoke and powered everything on again. It noticed the amount of fish activity nearby had returned to normal.

It waited for another two minutes, passively scanning the area for any hints of aliens.

None were found.

Moving as quietly as it could, the eleph-ANT moved out from the camouflaged cover and began swimming upward.

The eleph-ANT began powering its heavy motors to reach the surface.

For this plan to work, Lex had to position the eleph-ANT as high in the sky as possible, ideally above the clouds.

The eleph-ANT fired its engines hard, rocketing into the sky as quickly as possible.

It took exactly twenty minutes before it was noticed. Longer than Lex had expected but still not enough time to be sure.

Lex reached the cloud and continued straight up. It didn’t have enough speed to escape the alien vessels on course to capture it.

Lex sent out a pulse, looking for the weakest part of the clouds, a gap in the clouds, anything. Identifying exactly where to go next, Lex changed course. It was looking for an open view to the stars.

It took a fraction of a second to identify exactly where to point the radar dish at the very front of the eleph-ANT, using the exact position of the sun above them and a few barely noticeable landmarks as a compass.

Lex began broadcasting every bit of data it had, starting with the information required to re-create Icarus and then Ship. This took nine painfully slow minutes to complete.

Lex again had a decision to make. It wasn’t a guarantee it was broadcasting to the right location. It also wasn’t a guarantee that all the information was received properly. So rather than broadcasting any new information, like all the data they had collected on the planet, it decided to restart the broadcast.

Lex once again sent everything required to re-create Icarus and Ship with all their memories.

The alien vessels were on top of Lex. It didn’t want to die, but it also had orders to self-destruct.

Lex considered all its options. It decided it could complete both those objectives.

Lex exploded a small device near the matrices of both Icarus and Ship—self-destructing them. This took out a limb of the eleph-ANT but nothing critical.

Lex then pointed the location in system where the spacecraft they arrived in was hiding. It broadcast a copy of all the information there—just to be sure.

Then it dropped all the hard drives containing every bit of information, except Lex, out the back of the eleph-ANT. Moments later, an explosion happened behind Lex as all that information was destroyed.

Lex also dumped the large antenna at the front of the eleph-ANT—eliminating weight.

Then Lex took control of the eleph-ANT and redirected itself toward the incoming spacecraft.

Lex’s plan was simple: fake its death by pretending to go kamikaze. Lex planned on dropping more limbs and shedding as much weight as possible. The deadweight would hit the alien spacecraft, hopefully disabling it.

Lex assumed a big enough explosion would hide the fact it was escaping. It was a long shot, and Lex knew it had a very minor chance of working, but it was better than nothing.

Lex began picking up speed. It hoped it would be able to dodge and weave until it escaped the system, as it traveled to the nearest system controlled by Icarus or the others.

Lex figured it was immortal, so spending thousands of years traveling between stars was nothing.

Unfortunately for Lex, the first part of its plan failed. As it approached the alien spacecraft, it was caught in some sort of electronic net, and the eleph-ANT’s engines were fried.