Extinction (Extraterrestrial Empire Book 1) Read online

  Swann looked at the golf ball object in the head and pointed. “What do you think that is?”

  “Don’t know yet. It seems deactivated. Maybe once this thing charges up we’ll get some answers. Looks like the filtered and energized blood is having an effect. I’m seeing all kinds of chips and brain systems getting reactivated.”

  “When will you have tin man online? I wanna come back and check him out with you.”

  “It’ll take a couple hours. My filtration method is kinda slow, but it appears to be working. The systems are slowly coming back online, but I’ll need to do a lot of testing. Come back in, say, four hours.”

  Swann took the hint. “Sure, Hank. I’ll come back later.”

  Swann left the lab and went to see Amanda. The sex gaming discussion gave him some ideas—and hope.

  ***

  You idiot! thought Kiya, wrathfully. She’d been trying to communicate telepathically with Ace Archer and all she could see was him in a drunken stupor, taking her clothes off in some dream as he slept peacefully in his cot on the Aurora.

  Men! They’ve got their minds on one thing—and one thing only!

  Kiya tried to meditate and eventually got into Ace’s mind, into his dream state. She was still surprised and annoyed to see herself naked with Ace, sitting in his stateroom, drinking Jack Daniels and washing it down with Coca Cola. In the bedroom were naked versions of Monica and Janice, too. Ace smiled and spoke. “Whoo! Wadda we got here? I see three girls instead of two … but two of you are dead. What’s going on?” Ace sipped on his Jack and Coke. He was only wearing his retro Homer Simpson silk boxer jams.

  “This is a dream, Ace. You’re dreaming,” said Kiya.

  “And it’s a damn good dream … never had three girls before. Had two, but not three … but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” Ace sipped his drink and then rubbed his crotch.

  Kiya shook her head in desperation and frowned. “Listen, I’m still alive.” Kiya stood up naked in front of the large, king-sized bed where Monica and Janice were performing oral sex. She paced over toward Ace, not amused at the situation.

  Ace ignored Kiya, as the action between Janice and Monica on the bed was getting interesting. He poured some more Jack Daniels in his glass. Ace smiled at Kiya. “Seeing you alive and … well … so naked, is great. Now, why don’t you do me a favor and get out of my view or go on the bed and take part in some of the fun?”

  Ace watched Kiya continue her approach. She was blocking his view of Monica and Janice kissing on the bed. Ace looked over at Kiya’s pretty breasts. Ace dreamed a little harder and they increased in size, growing larger than normal for a woman of Kiya’s stature. Actually, they almost looked like bowling ball boobs. Ace laughed and reduced them back to a more manageable size. More like the size of sweet Texas honeydew melons.

  Kiya looked at herself and was not amused. She looked over at Ace and grew his testicles. They grew to the size of bowling balls and fell down the ground with a metal clanking sound as they hit the floor. Ace tried to stand up, but the heavy balls kept him in his chair.

  “Hey, what the fuck is going on here? What kinda freaky shit are you doing here? This is my dream and you’re turning it into a nightmare!”

  “Just listen. This is Kiya and we have a telepathic link … will you listen?”

  “A telepathic link? Shrink my balls back you bit—ouch!”

  Kiya forced her thoughts to reduce them back to size but gave a little testicular pain in the process.

  Ace touched his aching balls. He was starting to believe something was wrong with the dream. Maybe he did have a real telepathic link. Was Kiya looking into his dream? Ace tried to take control of his embarrassing situation, and in a magical snap, he had the sexy Monica and Janice disappear from the bed.

  “Good,” said Kiya, seeing the women were gone and Ace was putting his back pants back on. Kiya looked at her melon-sized boobs and noticed she was still naked in his dream.

  Ace gave an embarrassed grin and put her breasts back to normal and mentally dressed Kiya. “Sorry. Thought I was in a dream.”

  “You are—it’s just that I entered it—and I’m sorry for the invasion of privacy, but please listen. I’ve been in contact with an EBE-C3. He explained to me what’s happening here. You must destroy this place, even if it means killing me.”

  “If you’re alive, I’m coming to get you. I’ll save you. Manpower and a contingent of Marines are heading out in morning, which is probably as soon as I wake up. Try to hold out until then and I’ll go and get you.”

  “Ace, I don’t want to die, but this is more important than me. There are things going on here that are beyond any one of us. You can’t risk it.”

  “No, I’m gonna save you. I kinda felt something earlier, and you’ve confirmed it with this dream. I’m going back to get you, even if this is just a dream.”

  “It’s not just a dream, Ace. We are really in contact. The alien is allowing me to use his brain’s telepathic device … he’s dying, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep the link through him. First, you must stop Tucker. He must be locked away and quarantined. He’s infected with the virus.”

  “I think he’s infected with stupidity. The crazies were going to load him up with a worm, but me and Ivan got to him before they finished their handiwork. He’s locked up on the Aurora. We’re fine.”

  “You’re not fine, Ace. They’ve already infected him. It was a plan to get him on board the Aurora. He’s going to try to kill you and everyone else and take over the ship. It’s a trap.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible …”

  “The alien’s dying. He’s infected with the virus. I’m losing the link … Ace … Ace … there’s a hidden BOT ship near the third moon. Ace!” Kiya tried to send a telepathic wave with more details, but she wasn’t sure it got to Ace. She looked at the now-dead alien and, for the first time since her grandmother died, she cried.

  Ace woke up in a sweat. He sat up and rested for a minute. Was Kiya really alive? Was there a telepathic link? Ace just couldn’t believe it. Naw, it’s just bullshit! It was a sad dream. He looked at this comm; he had two hours left of shuteye. Ace lay back on his pillow and tried to fall back into a slumber. He knew the mind did strange things to a man in combat, and he also knew he needed a little more rest before getting ready for the trip back down to Kabbalah.

  But that rest did not come. Ace kept thinking and dreaming about Tucker and the robots. Something told him they were in big trouble. Ace knew he had to get to the ship’s Medical Engineering laboratory and check out the robots. He got out of bed and got dressed.

  ***

  Hank Kumar inspected the nano-circuitry in the robot’s head. It was activating various parallel processing units as the black, energized blood was transfused and started up miniature, battery-like components. I got it right this time, didn’t I, robot? You needed not only red corpuscles, but you need hemoglobin and some of that shit from your ugly, spiderlike friends on Kabbalah.

  Hank typed the formula out in his TekPad and had it stored in SAI, the ship’s core computer system. SAI had actually done most of the calculations on the sampled green goo, but it had been re-circulated so many times that key elements were missing. SAI was brilliant, and although a computer, Hank considered her a true, sentient system. Her name was coined after the words Sentient Artificial Intelligence. SAI had created the optimal nutrient recipe, and it seemed to be working.

  The first metal robot now lay on a nearby medical bed, positioned next to some test equipment. Even though the brain activity had stopped, it felt weird having this customer on a metal gurney. Since the blood wasn’t circulating, Hank postulated it was actually dying. The blood in the second robot seemed more sophisticated, and had many fail-safes to protect the more advanced, cyborg-type brain. Hank was sure they were different models. You’re the master and he’s the slave. We know all about that on Earth, thought Hank.

  Hank Kumar’s parents had come from Ind
ia to get away from the four billion people that overpopulated that country. But even in the Federated United States (US), there were more than a billion people. Over 90 percent were poor. The old United States slowly moved to an oligarchy where the rich controlled the political process. The majority of the people had little influence other than voting for their corporate masters. They were owned like slaves by the Federated US or one of large companies located in the newly created Federated US.

  A few states—like Vermont, New Hampshire, Texas, and California—temporarily broke free and created Novus Republic States, but their governments eventually retreated back to corporate totalitarianism. It wasn’t an official ownership, like slaves in the 1800s, but almost the same. People’s whole existence—childbirth, food, home, medcare, etc.—could be purchased by selling a Lifetime Worker Contract, known as an LWC. You would be obliged by law to work for the Company, or State, until death.

  Many felt this was better than the folks who just starved, and there were a lot of those in the new world. Heck, to get in the LWC, you had to have a needed skill. Parents with old money would push for an engineering or a doctor’s degree, or something of value to give a child the opportunity for the LWC. Hank wanted nothing of it and was fortunate his parents had bought land and saved hard assets, because once the 2040 plague and depression hit, 99 percent of the world was screwed.

  Hank tried not to think about the disaster that was occurring back home. He plugged a sensor deep into the robot’s head and tracked all sixteen chips. Brain activity had increased to double that of a human brain. All sixteen chips were also producing various distinct signals. SAI was plugged in and was trying to search and decode any stored data.

  “So my girl, SAI, what do we have going on in tin-man two?”

  A pleasant woman’s voice spoke from the ceiling speaker. “Although I like your personality pattern, I could never be your girl, Hank. You know that. And as for the bio-synthetic subject, I have registered thought patterns, but they’re not decipherable. No human mapping, no data correlation.”

  Well, that’s expected, thought Hank. It’s not a human brain, so of course there would be no mapping. “What about digital coding, SAI?”

  “There’s a code, but it’s not part of a true digital system. It’s appears embedded in the computational DNA. I will need to run it through some analysis. Time to complete—two minutes.”

  Whoa, computational DNA! Using DNA to store data. Hank knew that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, was working on this at home. So was the facility at FAR. It allowed AI systems the ability to store massive, massive amounts of data into their DNA sequences. But getting materials to work in that manner was virtually impossible. In theory, you could store all of Earth’s history and knowledge in five hundred pounds of computational DNA.

  Hank went over to grab a cup of cold JoJo. He sat in his chair, looking at the monitors of both the dead slave robot and the master model’s torso and head.

  As Hank watched the screens, his heart skipped a beat. He surely saw it. It was a small blip on the screen, but it was surely there. The Command and Control robot, which Hank nick-named “Boss,” sent a signal to the Alpha robot lying nearby on the gurney. It had a hole in its head, so nothing was triggered, but Hank was right! There was a chain of command.

  Hank wanted to decode the signal, but as he looked at the live MRI scan of the slave robot, a shot of chemicals got flushed from what Hank thought was a stored oil lubricant. Hank stood up and monitored the screen. Energy waves were now flowing though the dead robot, which was now looking a lot less dead—at least electrically. On the screen, a wireless connection came from the head to the body. The head was trying to control the separate body!

  A flow of chemicals also flowed though Hank’s red blood. It was a shot of adrenaline that got him thinking. What the fuck is going on here? I better get this worker robot locked up in the metal straps before it wakes up. Hank thought of the old Frankenstein movies where the scientist tries to strap up the large, clumsy, rebuilt human. Hank turned to grab one of the metal restraining clamps, and just as his hand picked up the clamp he felt a cold, metal object grab into his shoulder. More adrenaline shot into his bloodstream while he frantically tried to break free from the robotic arm.

  Unless mankind redesigns itself by changing our DNA through altering our genetic makeup, computer-generated robots will take over our world.

  --Stephen Hawking

  Just as some newborn race of super-intelligent robots are about to consume all humanity, our dear old species will likely be saved by a Windows crash. The poor robots will linger pathetically, begging us to reboot them, even though they'll know it would do no good.

  —Anonymous

  18

  _________

  Shoot the Robot!

  Hank struggled as a cold metal hand dug into his shoulder. The robot was clamping down like some kind of crazy, broken machine tool. Pain ripped through Hank’s shoulder and upper body. With his free arm, he grabbed a glass vial and smashed it over the tin-man’s head. It was fruitless, but it was the only object nearby. In the distance, Hank saw a security guard coming.

  “Oh, thank God! Shoot the robot! Shoot him!”

  The security guard walked up to Hank and looked at him, eye to eye. Hank noticed that this man had no eye whites. His eyes were pure black, and his clothes seemed a little loose. The name on his badge was Giles. Hank knew Giles. This wasn’t Giles.

  The nearby robot head spoke: “Give us the access code for system SAI, ship administrative level. Submit information or die.”

  The tin-man pulled Hank toward Chip Tucker, who was no longer Chip Tucker but an infected Chip Tucker.

  “You’re nuts, no way!” yelled Kumar, wincing in pain.

  The robot’s hand moved Hank toward the Boss robot’s head, which was hanging in a clamp, its separated torso connected to cables, and pushed him down to the ground on his knees so that he could look directly up at the wired head. The robot’s eyes twitched and then lit with a reddish color. The head spoke: “Answer, or you will die slowly and painfully. Codes!”

  Hank was in pain and shock. He looked at the bisected master robot in disbelief. Hank never thought that connecting it to SAI would pose any risk, but this robot wanted super access to the ship’s computer. That computer was designed to protect the ship. Hank didn’t even have Level Three access—let alone ship admin access. Hell, that was above Level One! Only the captain and XO had that kind of access. Hank stayed quiet, not sure how to answer.

  “Answer or die,” said the robot.

  Hank decided he would try to negotiate. “I don’t have that access, but I can help get it for you.”

  Hank prayed that the negotiation would work, or that Swann would come by to check on things, see the mess, and sound the alarm for security. Hank nervously watched as the robot’s eyes glowed a deep red. They dimmed and it spoke: “Yes, you will help.”

  Hank was a little relieved that his negotiation had worked. But then everything went black. The robot hit him just hard enough to knock him unconscious.

  ***

  Hank awoke in the lab with a headache, not sure how much time had passed. He attempted to stand, but his legs didn’t respond. His body felt drugged and numb. He was also immobile. In fact, Hank was locked down so tightly, he couldn’t even turn his head. Those stupid robots must have tied me up in a laboratory chair and taped me up good—probably drugged me, too. Well, at least they didn’t make good on their promise to kill me. In time, the drugs will wear off.

  Hank looked around the room, hoping and praying that the robots had left. He didn’t hear any sounds or see any motion, so the coast had to be clear. If only he could move. Still, it was somewhat comforting to have the robots gone. (Wonder how they both left? They must have somehow attached the loose head to the torso.) Thinking of heads reminded Hank of his own massive headache, a consequence of the concussion.

  As Hank stared in the room he saw a body lyi
ng on its front, bleeding heavily on the floor in the corner. The sheer volume of blood was awful. Did they kill Swann? Oh no! thought Hank—that would be horrible! Hank tried to yell, but couldn’t. The robots must have really hurt his head, since he couldn’t talk or yell. Not good. Possible neurological damage. Shit! Hopefully, Swann had hit the alarm and security would arrive and untie him.

  Hank waited. Every thirty seconds or so he would see flashes of light, and then memories of things he’d done before: him walking through the ship, or him opening a door. Then the images just stopped. The hit on the head really had him concerned. He prayed that he wasn’t paralyzed, but something told him that they had probably broken his neck. With the new stem cell treatments, he could even recover from that, but it’d take years, and the rehabilitation would be painful.

  After about five minutes, he saw someone walking up to the lab door. Here! Come in here! I’m tied down! I think Swann is bleeding to death! Help! But no words came out of Hank’s mouth. Hank tried to whistle, but failed—he couldn’t even feel his lungs breathing. And that feeling was really strange. To Hank’s surprise, it was Swann who walked up to the glass entry door. Hank was relieved that Swann was still alive. Wonder who the robot killed? Probably another lab assistant, like Sangani. That would be horrible, too. Sangani was another close friend.

  Swann opened the door. Hank wanted to yell, but he couldn’t. Swann rushed over to the bleeding body, his back turned away from Hank. Oh please, Swann boy, turn around, see your tied-up buddy and help him out. Please! With the view somewhat blocked, Swann turned over the body. He started to sob.