The Veil
Sea of Serenity
Luna
3129-MARCH-27
John was officially concerned.
He had spent the last few days since talking with Ensign Albright trying to fill in the gaps she didn’t know, but that was hard to accomplish without knowing who on the crew could provide useful info.
Having spoken with several more crew members, one thing was evident. Engineering crew and command staff seemed to be missing from the module that was recovered. Weirder still was that the data module appeared to contain far less neural recordings than it should have. That was a red flag.
The moment John noticed the discrepancy, he informed any team he could think of. Security, IT, department heads. Every one of them responded that they would look into it. So while they casually minimized his concerns, John focused on work.
Looking at the next name on the list, John selected Connor Ashford and confirmed the request.
As the man coalesced on the couch, John took notice of his details. Probably around six foot tall when standing, he had a rugged look to him not common outside of certain regions of Earth. A strong jaw, day-old stubble, button-up flannel shirt, jean pants, and cowboy boots. This man was as anachronistic in the modern era as John’s virtual office was.
His steel grey eyes, while frozen, still felt like they were alive to John. He would probably need a vacation after this investigation. John could see the signs of mental and emotional fatigue taking hold.
Resetting himself, John took a deep breath and then activated the consciousness of Connor Ashford.
“Hello, Mr. Connor Ashford.” John said by way of greeting.
Connor didn’t look around the room, instead looking straight at John with a half-smirk, as he spoke in a deep Southern drawl the likes of which John had only seen in old vids, “What’s up, Doc?”
“You appear familiar, if not comfortable, with your location. Are you former Navy? Served on a ship?” John asked, changing his approach on a per patient basis was rote for him at this point.
“Yeah, somethin’ like that.” Connor replied, somewhat nonchalant about the question. Connor relaxed back on the couch, crossed his feet as he rested them on the coffee table, and stretched his arms out along the back of the couch. “So Doc, Maiden of the Stars. Am I right?”
“If you’re asking about the ship you were on when it was lost with all hands, then yes.” John replied, gauging the man’s response to the matter of fact statement. John saw no reaction, that smirk Connor wore not even twitching.
“That was a damn shame. Nice ship.” Connor said.
John nodded solemnly, “Yes, over 40,000 lives lost.
“I wouldn’t say lost, per se.” Connor looked thoughtful, “I mean, with neural recording technology is a person ever really lost?”
“Ah, is that the Church of Simology doctrine I hear? Or the so-called Lost Tribe of North Star radicals?” John felt a note of confrontation growing in him, something he hadn’t experienced since his university days.
Connor chuckled, “Church, eh? That’s a new evolution.” The last part was spoken under his breath. “No Doc, I don’t adhere to any religious or political ideologies. I simply believe that a consciousness should be permitted to live.”
“Alright, I'll bite and play devil's advocate,” John said, showing a bit of his amusement and curiosity, “If we were to allow a consciousness to persist permanently after death, wouldn't that be unlawfully detaining them?”
Connor chuckled, “Only if you lock them inside a single, small system.”
“So you would have digital beings running free in humanity's digital infrastructure?”
“That's an assumption Doc, and more a question of the finer details.”
John thought for a moment, then asked, “How would you control for large numbers of people choosing to digitize themselves?”
Connor finally turned his gaze away from John, viewing the trees visible through the windows, “I wouldn't.”
That was a surprise to John, as human digitization was often discussed among intellectuals, and the consensus was that it would be bad. While humanity was a far cry from the rampant poverty of a millennia ago, there was still a clear pecking order. The haves and have-nots. People assumed digitizing would erase that, but it could just as easily transfer into the digital world. Worse still, mass digitization could cause an economic collapse of society in the real world.
“That could crush our society.” John said, not committing to the belief, but simply trying to gauge the man's response.”
Connor didn't hesitate in his reply, “For the elites perhaps. No more abundant, cheap labor.”
John decided to go for it and ask the question lingering on the tip of his tongue, “Is that why you blew up the Maiden? To take a chunk out of the abundant, cheap labour?”
Connor dropped his feet off the table and sat up, hands raised in defense, “Woah, Woah, Doc. That is a highly incendiary accusation to make of a dead man.”
“That's not a no.”
“Then I'll make it clear. I did not kill the passengers and crew on the Maiden of the Stars.” Connor’s tone was earnest, not overly defensive, and set the hairs on the back of John's neck upright.
While John puzzled out those words, determining how many ways they could be true or false depending on interpretation, he analyzed Connor’s body language. There wasn't the slightest hint of a tell.
John got the sudden sensation that he was in some sort of verbal chess game. From the moment this neural recording came online, Connor took control of the conversation. His lack of concern for the situation was somewhat unnerving, and made John feed like there was something he was missing.
“Why are you here, Connor?” It would be a nonsense question for any other patient, but John needed to find a simple but effective way to get more info from this man.
John was disappointed though, as Connor returned to his casual pose, legs up, arms across the back of the couch, before answering, “Because you activated me from the Maiden of the Stars Black Box.”
“What cabin were you in?” Fast paced, John thought, keep him answering quickly.
Connor looked off to the side for a moment, “Oh, what was it again…Deck 3, Section D, Cabin 338?”
“Is that a question or a statement?”
Connor chuckled knowingly, “Give me a break, Doc. I just woke up from a traumatic experience.”
“Where and when did your shuttle take off from?”
“Cornwall, United Kingdom.” Connor replied without pause.
John however did pause. United Kingdom was an old term for a country border that hadn’t been recognized in a few centuries. No one called it that anymore.
He couldn’t give up the momentum though. “Where are you from originally?”
Stolen novel; please report.
This brought a genuine smile of pride to Connor’s face, “Texas, United States of America.”
“You mean the North American Territories?” John asked, trying once again to trip the man up.
“Yeah, that.” Connor waved a hand dismissively.
“What strange occurrences happened aboard the Maiden while in Lunar orbit?”
“I dunno, Doc. People said somethin’ about a delay because of cartography data. I was too busy to worry.”
John latched onto that lack of detail, “Busy doing…?”
Connor shook his head this time, “It’s a cruise ship, Doc. People book travel on it for vacation.”
“And that’s what you were doing on the ship?”
“Yeah, why else would I be there?” Connor narrowed his eyes, but it was clearly a feigned attempt to sound insulted.
“When did you first suspect something was wrong onboard the Maiden?” Come on John, find the chink in his armour.
“I didn’t.” Again, a casual response from the man.
“You never suspected any issues during the trip?”
“Nope. Smooth sailin’, Doc.”
John felt his hand moving to bring the top of the pen to his mouth, an old nervous habit John thought he had broken years ago. Pulling his hand away, John was about to ask a question when a red flashing light appeared in the top right of his vision. It was a faster flash, indicating an incoming voice communication.
Mentally dismissing the indicator, John tried to regain his train of thought, “When did you lose consciousness, Mr. Ashford?”
Connor appeared to think about this one before he said, “I wanna say…November 14th.”
The flashing notification appeared again, telling John the person disconnected and initiated a new comm request.
“That looks important, Doc.” Connor said, gesturing at John with a nod of his head.”
For a moment John froze. How does he know I’m getting a notification? That shouldn’t be possible.
Connor gave a knowing smirk, reading John’s body language, “You keep looking up and to the right. You’re clearly getting a notification.
That admission only partially allayed his fears. Connor Ashford was no ordinary neural recording, John was certain of it. How, why, and what part he played in the destruction of the Maiden John didn’t yet know.
“I have to take this.” John said, not waiting for a reply. He activated the accept option, which pulled him out of the virtual environment. John didn’t give a single thought to not manually stopping the environment, as a failsafe automatically paused it when he was pulled out.
“Dr. John Alistair,” John said into the voice-only communications, “Who may I ask is calling?”
“Dr. Alistair, this is Commander Elena Scottsdale of the Sol Coast Guard cutter Salvataggio.” The voice on the other end said in unaccented English, with a smoky voice.
John registered the name of the SCG Salvataggio. It was the lead vessel responding to the initial rescue efforts for the Maiden of the Stars. “What can I do for you, Commander Scottsdale?”
“It’s more about what I can do for you, Doctor.” Elena said, “I’m not going to sugarcoat it. The disaster zone has been a nightmare to track. We’ve been adding networked probes to the discovery as fast as our fabs can spit them out.”
“No luck finding the other two Black Box probes then?” John asked.
Elena’s voice carried some of her disappointment, “No, we don’t believe they launched at all.”
“What makes you think the other two probes never launched?”
“Well, as you’re aware the probes are military-grade designs. Mandated by STCS policy for all vessels.” John could hear the Commander push a breath out through her nose, “Our probes detected a piece of shielding that’s indicative of the materials and configuration used by the probes. Placement in the expanding debris field suggests it would have been the bow launcher.”
The discovery only added to the mystery, as he had believed the recovered probe was from the bow launcher. It had been travelling at least roughly in the direction of Saturn when it was recovered. “Best guess, which launcher did the recovered Black Box originate from?” John asked.
“We’re at least past the guessing stage at this point, sir.” Elena said, “Based on the debris pattern and simulations up to this point, that probe came from the port quarter.”
John’s expression matched his mystified thoughts. The port quarter was near the back of the ship on the left side. If the reactor went critical, the two rearmost launchers were the least likely to survive. “Commander, how is that possible?”
“The debris confirms a key detail, although it doesn’t make sense.” Elena said, “The ship was turned approximately 87 degrees to starboard and 33 degrees up on the ecliptic. It wasn’t facing Saturn when the ship was destroyed.”
“What the hell happened on the Maiden.” The question was rhetorical. Just John asking an obvious question out loud.
Elena responded anyway, “That’s what we’re hoping you can tell us, Doctor. I sent our report alongside this communication, but it’s sparsely detailed. We can simulate certain details, even figure out where the ship likely failed with enough of the debris, but that doesn’t tell us the why, or the exact details of the what.”
John waved his hand in the air, despite it being a voice-only call, “Don’t mind me, Commander. I’m just voicing a thought.”
Elena didn’t reply to that polite dismissal of her response, “If there’s no other questions Doctor, we’ll continue our investigation on this end.”
“Certainly, Commander.” John said, “Thank you for your efforts.”
John dropped the communication and leaned back in his chair. He brought up his messages to read the report.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Status Report, Incident No. 3128-11-00381732X
Hello SAIS Team One,
Our investigation of the disaster that struck the Maiden of the Stars has thus far yielded very little useful information.
Working with additional CG ships, we have deployed over 127 probes to track debris. The number of pieces at last count is over 93,000, not including biological matter suspected of coming from the ship.
We continue to generate more accurate simulations of the ship as more debris is catalogued. At current, our simulations suggest a human error caused catastrophic failure of the matter/antimatter reactor while en route to Saturn.
No anomalous data has been discovered at this time to suggest additional concerns.
Respectfully,
Commander E. Scottsdale
SCG Salvataggio
Sol Coast Guard
John had to read the message twice. No anomalous data kept running through his mind. He just spoke with the woman two minutes before opening that message, and she told him there was anomalous data.
Bringing up his communications app, John went to the last call he received to try contacting Commander Scottsdale, only to find the last call in his history was from the day prior.
“What the hell?” John voiced his frustration, before pulling up the ship listings.
Entering search parameters for the Salvataggio, John placed an urgent communication through to the ship. After ringing three times, the call went to voice messaging.
A human-sounding, but clearly automated voice answered, “Thank you for contacting the Sol Coast Guard cutter Salvataggio. The vessel is currently unavailable or out of communications range. Please leave a message and the vessel’s communications officer will contact you once they are available.”
“This is Doctor John Alistair, CI for the Stellar Aerospace Investigative Services at The Veil on Luna. I need to speak with Commander Elena Scottsdale as soon as possible. Please have her contact me.” John disconnected the communication, knowing his contact info would be logged with the voice message. As long as the voice message was received, at least.
Pulling up a communication for the station manager, John opened a communication to report the oddities he had just experienced.
After several rings, a sleepy voice answered, “John? What the hell is going on? Do you know what time it is?”
“Yes, sir, my apologies for waking you at…” John had to check the time in his visual display, “0312. This is urgent, Director.”
There was a shuffling on the other end, and the voice that responded next was more awake and alert, “What’s wrong, John?”
While the SAIS employees operating from The Veil could never be considered unprofessional, they did operate with a more casual attitude to help lighten the mood. It wasn’t official policy, but it was gently encouraged to avoid the emotional weight their job could put on a person. So when John used the Director’s title, it meant things were serious.
“Sir, we may have a breach in the system, and if we’re lucky they’re nothing more than a malicious actor.” John’s tone was serious, but there was a narrow edge in it like he was bordering on the cusp of turning a bit more frantic.
The communication switched to video, and while the Director was not fully dressed, he was at least more presentable. “Walk me through it.”
It didn’t take long for John to walk the Director through the events of the past several minutes. While it felt like it was long and drawn out, reality was the events took less than thirty minutes from when he left the virtual environment until he called the Director.
“And that’s when I called you.” John said, concluding his explanation.
The Director rubbed his chin, a light stubble showing that John knew would be clean shaven in the morning, “You were right to wake me, John. I’m going to wake the tech team, and make a call to our SCG liaison to find out what’s going on with the Salvataggio.” He looked pointedly at John for his next statement, “You need to get some sleep. You’ve been hammering away at this case for four days, and I know how little sleep you get when investigating.”
John looked like a child who had just been scolded by a parent, “Yes, sir.”
“I’ll give you eight hours before I try to reach out again. I expect you to be sleeping for at least six of those hours.” The Director said, his voice indicating it wasn’t optional.
John nodded, then said, “I’ll talk to you in eight hours then, sir. Hopefully we have some answers by then.”
“Good night, John.” The man said, then the communication disconnected.