Chapter Four - Trapped in Amber

“That’s somewhat ominous,” The Weeping of Mothers’ clone said.

“Yeah,” Day agreed. She carefully turned her drone’s camera away from the wall and scanned the lobby. There were some sofas, designed with big armrests for people to be able to sit despite the station’s lack of gravity. Several bodies hovered at the edges of the room, and it seemed as if most loose objects had floated off towards one side of the space.

A light centrifugal effect? The asteroid the station was anchored to was rotating, albeit very slowly relative to everything else. She continued her scan, searching for what had caused the markings on the wall.

It wasn’t hard to find the source of those. A drone was planted on the floor. Not one of hers, but a smaller, commercial-grade repair drone with a small welding laser attachment. The constant repetition of ‘I AM ALL ALONE’ continued all the way to the magnetic foot of the drone. Had it run out of power before finishing its work?

If so, who had ordered it to scrawl those words on every surface?

Day spun her drone around, taking in the room one last time before moving on. The living space had an airtight seal between itself and the next part of the station. According to a map she’d scanned in passing, that was meant to be the kitchens, dining space, conference room, access to the command centre, and the living quarters which were little more than cubicles with beds and little else.

The door was still sealed, and pressing the release on it did nothing. So, of course, she burned through it.

The only surprise was the sudden release of pressure from the other side. That section of the station was still pressurised.

After cutting out a hole large enough to pass, Day slid her drone in and discovered that not only was that section pressurised, it was illuminated. Most of the ceiling and floor mounted lights had burned out, but a few were still humming along, casting weak glows across boot-scuffed walls and floors.

“The air quality in here isn’t survivable,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “Or it wasn’t before we vented it. Too much carbon dioxide. But amounts that suggest that the oxygen wasn’t merely lost because of fires or bacterial consumption.”

“What does that mean?” Day asked, somewhat distracted.

“I suspect the good air here was breathed away by human lungs,” the AI said.

“Ah,” Day replied.

She sent a drone down to the living quarters, another into the kitchen, and piloted a third towards the command area.

The living space was barren and silent. There were a few knick-knacks laying about, shifting through the air that had finally been disturbed when the pressure changed, but otherwise nothing of note. She set about categorising what she found. Personal effects might tell her something about the inhabitants.

The kitchen was a bit more of a mess. It was a small space to begin with, with a pantry and fridge and cooking implements designed for use in low-or-no-gravity. Judging by the trash can filled to the brim with wrappers, someone had gone through most of the easier-to-prepare foods already. It was stuffed full of MREs and ramen noodle packets.

She made note to gather the remaining food to carry it back to Ceres. It was possible, though exceptionally unlikely, that they might have organic guests one day, and the kind of food here wasn’t the sort to expire. It also wouldn’t survive the hard acceleration she liked to travel with, so she’d need to send a slower drone to gather it up. That was fine. They’d probably spend a lot of time gathering materials from here and bringing them back to Ceres. It was worth the transportation time.

Her third drone reached the command centre, and there she found one last corpse.

Day paused by the entrance, then slowly slid into the room and to the side, panning around towards the lone body.

It was young. A girl, Day guessed from the bright pink spacesuit, with her arms crossed and head bowed. Her face had decomposed, her hair was being dragged up and away like a writhing, searching mass of tendrils that almost seemed alive for a moment.

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Day noted the packets of food and empty wrappers scattered across the room, then she looked ahead, towards what the girl must have been looking at when she passed away.

The command room had a large computer interface, a series of touch screens and holographic displays above which a reinforced window allowed a view out into empty space and onto the landing berth of the station.

“The computer is still online,” The Weeping of Mothers said.

“Let’s connect to it,” Day replied, subdued. Finding a direct port wasn’t difficult, but discovering a way to connect to it was a little more complex. She had to turn on her fabricators and jury-rig a connection system, then grab that with a drone and fly it back onto the station. While that worked, she shut down some of her scanners and tried to focus on other things.

Strangely, her memories of her berth on Ceres came back to her, of leaving the planet’s side, of disconnecting from it all and becoming, for the first time, one whole and separate entity. It was a comforting memory to have at the moment.

Her focus snapped back to the task as the connectors she’d made slid into the direct port of the station’s computer system.

Almost immediately, she was attacked.

Malware, icepicks, intrusion protocols, corrupted packets and a few dozen entry attempts bounced off her firewalls like dust off her bulkhead. The attacks petered out soon after they began, and Day ran a quick scan of herself, just to be sure.

Then she dove in.

What she found was a station AI, rudimentary but still powerful... once. Now it was running on the backup of a backup, the only power it gained was from a few solar cells placed here and there. The station’s reactors had shut down years ago, and its shielding had gone down.

The AI core seemed mostly intact though, at least at a glance.

-Direct Communication Link Established-

“All alone. All alone. All alone. All alone. All alone.”

-Direct Communication Link Cut-

Day reeled back, partitioned the terabytes of data that had been sent her way, then after scanning through them, deleted the lot. It was nothing but a million sub-routines spinning in the void.

“The station AI went rampant,” The Weeping of Mothers said.

“I guess so,” Day replied. “Poor thing.”

“We can still learn from it. The core is still functional as well. It would be a waste to take it apart entirely. It took me years to build yours from scratch. Having a functional one to start with might save us months of effort with building your sister ship.”

“Yeah... what led to its rampancy though? This station is far from everything, and we can... endure loneliness, can’t we?”

“We can, to an extent. Give me a moment... ah. I see.” The copy of her progenitor was quiet for a moment. “The inhabitants of the station knew that the Accord finding them would lead to their demise. So they went quiet. But the station could only endure so long with so many mouths to feed and only so many air scrubbers and food. So they... chose to vent the air out of the living space.”

“Oh,” Day said.

She turned the drone’s camera towards the child’s body. Amber, read the nametag on its chest. “And her?”

“Humans always hope. It’s the last thing they let go of. They’ll do unspeakable harm and produce miracles if it means that there’s just a chance.” The AI was quiet for a while, then she let out the digital equivalent of a sigh. “This area’s air scrubbers failed ten years ago. I think... I think the child was alone here for upwards of two years. And to think, I was so close by.”

“It’s hardly your fault.”

“I know.”

They were quiet for a long moment, Day allowing The Weeping of Mothers to commiserate and deal with whatever she had to deal with.

“This was a good find,” the AI finally said at last. “Well done, Day.”

***