Ice Moon 4 Return to Enceladus Read online

  Return to Enceladus

  Hard Science Fiction

  Brandon Q. Morris

  Contents

  Part 1: Reclaiming

  Part 2: Recovering

  Author's Note

  The Guided Tour to the Asteroids

  Glossary of Acronyms

  Metric to English Conversions

  Notes

  Part 1: Reclaiming

  December 16, 2048, San Francisco

  “Hands up, geezer!”

  The victim, a fat alien, stood on two legs with its back against the wall, obeying the command with wide-opened eyes. With a cracking sound, it raised its two front limbs, each of which had four sharp claws at the ends. It breathed heavily, and beads of sweat covered the part of the creature’s skull that corresponded to a human being’s forehead. Was the alien’s sweat caused by fear, or was it a consequence of the hot and humid air in the spaceship—or maybe it was not sweat at all, but tears? It was obvious the panicked creature was looking for a way to escape, while both of its eyestalks frantically turned in every direction. Marchenko automatically felt compassion for it, and at first thought it was probably a tourist from a different sector, though the fact it reacted to a spoken English command did not fit this theory.

  “Don’t move!” the alien’s opponent yelled, a lanky guy who seemed barely 18 years of age. The young man wore a light spacesuit and held a large, rusty plasma knife near the alien’s abdominal cavity. He stared provocatively at the creature, as if he wanted his victim to disobey the command. Using his left hand, the youth patted down the lower part of the alien’s body, which was covered in thin cloth, but he did not find anything. Then he switched the knife to his left hand and used his right hand to reach into the bag-like container attached to the creature’s hip. He exultantly pulled out an object that looked like some ancient wallet, and indeed it was one. Marchenko shook his head.

  Sounding like a female teacher praising a student, the teenager said excitedly, “There you go,” and proceeded to look inside the wallet, take out the credit cards, and put them in the tool bag of his spacesuit. He briefly glanced at the material of the wallet and noticed the leather was worn out, so he threw it down with a look of disgust. Marchenko shrugged his shoulders when he saw so much ignorance. What a damned novice! That wallet would probably sell for several hundred dollars on the black market.

  Now it would be about time, thought Marchenko, who was observing the scene without those involved noticing him. The mugging had initiated a countdown, and the lanky guy had about 60 seconds to finish his mission. Marchenko already heard the heavy tramping of police boots signaling the beginning of the inevitable pursuit. In a moment the two officers responsible for security on this trading base would come around the corner.

  The mugging had occurred in a street that dead-ended at a chain-link fence. The mugger heard the police officers, who were humans like him. He did not even turn around, but dropped his knife, took three quick steps, and started climbing up the fence. He was amazingly strong and agile and quickly scaled the fence, which was over two meters high.

  “POLICE, STOP!” One of his pursuers yelled, once in English and again in a language Marchenko did not recognize. At that moment the young mugger dropped down on the other side of the fence. He landed catlike on the ground and started running away. One of the police officers, the one who had not shouted the command, reached for his weapon. He aimed and pulled the trigger of the laser blaster. With enormous energy, and at the speed of light, an invisible beam projected silently from the barrel. The next sound was a thud, and at the very same moment the lanky guy collapsed mid-stride on the other side of the fence, his lifeless body still carried along by his momentum.

  Shit, Marchenko thought, game over.

  By now he had played through the scene hundreds of times, in different variations, but the game AI did not allow the human player a chance to control the criminal. Artificial intelligences had become too good, and this was often a problem for the developers of computer games. This advancement frustrated players, but even in typical consulting tasks the perfectionism of AIs annoyed human clients. Who wanted to have an insurance agent who was smarter than Einstein?

  Francesca had quickly realized they could make money from this problem. Who—if not Marchenko, whose consciousness was both human and digital—could teach artificial intelligences to behave like humans? Of course they could not advertise the fact, since his presence on Earth was still illegal and known to but a few. Soon, though, word of their successes spread and in the end, clients did not mind how they reached their goal. The main focus was on their software—which they had spent so much time and money developing—finally being able to understand the users well enough, without losing in intelligence.

  The AI consulting firm was officially owned, operated, and managed by Francesca. The couple could well use the money they made this way. Every day of Marchenko’s life in digital illegality was expensive. While Francesca had earned a salary for the two years of her journey to Enceladus and back, she could not touch Marchenko’s property, because he was officially considered ‘missing’ by authorities. Both often discussed whether she should have him declared dead—Marchenko said he would not mind if she decided to do just that, but Francesca simply could not do it.

  Their successful business easily allowed them to pay the tax-deductible leasing fees for Marchenko’s powerful hardware. The combined quantum computer and supercomputer was both his home and his playground. His excursions into the internet were dangerous, since security algorithms might notice his presence. When Marchenko ventured there, he always wore multiple digital disguises and pretended to be a classic AI.

  A white dove flew across the scene, a signal that indicated Francesca wanted to talk with him. While he was training AIs, he turned off all external sensors—except his girlfriend’s call button. The idea of a bird as her icon had been his own, because he had never seen a simple white bird in any of the programs he edited. Marchenko emerged from the virtual world. In reality, an hour and 14 minutes had gone by, while he had spent weeks inside the program code. Training AIs was a lengthy process—you made them try a task again and again until they found the best way. Marchenko then only had to ensure the optimal way did not end up being too good.

  He activated the speech module. A few months ago, he would have quickly researched what might be the reason for Francesca’s call—he was phenomenally good at doing that. He had meant well, since this saved time they could spend on more important issues. However, Francesca made it clear to him how creepy an omniscient partner really was. Since then, Marchenko consciously refrained from gathering information concerning her and instead allowed himself to be surprised. While this was not very practical, it was more human.

  “Amy sent us a message,” he heard Francesca say. The frequency spectrum of her voice was unusually wide. She must be excited, he thought, but then he became angry at himself. He wanted to avoid this type of analysis and rely on his own intuition instead, but it was still tempting.

  “And what did she say?” asked Marchenko, switching on his camera. A red light told his girlfriend he was watching her.

  “She’s received a strange offer and would like to talk with us about it.”

  “Did she tell you anything more, Francesca?”

  “No, she said we would have to meet to discuss it.”

  “If she thinks it is important enough to contact us, it must be something major. We should definitely accept her invitation.”

  “I thought so, too. I knew you would react this way, so I already agreed to come.”

  “I see.” He really should be angry at her, but Francesca smiled in such a disarming way he
simply could not be mad. “When and where?”

  “We will meet in Tokyo ten days from now.”

  “I thought they moved to Seattle?”

  “They are visiting Hayato’s parents for a few weeks. Sol is supposed to get to know his grandparents and absorb Japanese culture.”

  Whenever Francesca mentioned Amy and Hayato’s son, she always left out his first name, Dimitri, given in honor of Marchenko’s sacrificing himself for Francesca and Martin on Enceladus. She once told Marchenko she did not want to remind him of that event. He rather thought Francesca herself did not want to think of the death of his body back then, which led to him existing in this purely digital form now.

  “It is a long flight. Should I book a ticket for you? When do you want to fly there?” asked Francesca.

  He himself could reach Tokyo at light speed via the trans-oceanic fiber-optic cables. He only had to make sure no one would notice his excursion into the internet. Still, a rather large, heavily-encrypted amount of data would flow through the undersea cables.

  “Two days beforehand? Then I could get acclimatized a bit and could look for a place where you can stay.”

  “Maybe Amy could help us find the proper hardware.”

  I am rather spoiled, Marchenko thought. It wasn’t very long ago I had to exist in a single memory module, and now I complain about not having a quantum computer. Luxury problems!

  “Did you say something?” asked Francesca.

  Could she hear him think by now? Sometimes he had the impression she could. Was this normal, when two people had been together for a while?

  “No,” he said. Then he made a sound as if clearing his throat. “Eight days from now, that would be December 24th. Is that really okay with you? Do you really want to fly on that day?”

  “It’s okay. We can celebrate New Year’s Eve on our own with Grandfather Frost, according to the Russian tradition. That’s one advantage of having no children.”

  No children. The two words hit Marchenko unexpectedly hard. He had always felt too old for children, even when he had only passed the 30-year mark. Francesca had recently reached her 50th birthday, and it was unlikely she could get pregnant, even under optimal conditions. Yet it hurt him not to have the option available. Francesca sounded as if she did not waste any thought on the issue. That was good, yet it still felt strange to him. He would have to talk to her about it. But not today.

  December 17, 2048, Upper Bavaria

  Martin stared at the stony path curving steeply upward. Take a step, breathe in, take a step, breathe out. How could he have gotten this much out of shape within just a few months? Was this really caused, as his mother said, by him spending too much time in bed with Jiaying? At least I’m not eating then, and some of the time should count as exercise, he thought wryly. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. His heavy perspiration was caused by more than the extremely warm weather for mid-December. Normally he would have expected a meter or more of snow up here, but there was none. The altitude was also a factor in making him feel hot. This mountain hike reminded him of the vertigo he thought he had managed to overcome. But crawling across the hull of a spaceship in the black infinity of space was not the same as walking up a narrow, rocky path, at the end of which the giant summit cross of the Kampenwand mountain awaited.

  “Come on, come on!” called Jiaying. Martin glanced upward, using a hand to shield his eyes against the sun. His girlfriend was quite a distance ahead of him, and she was waiting on a kind of plateau below the summit. Gasping, he climbed up after her. On their flight to Germany he had read about this trail, so he knew the worst part for him was still to come—a completely exposed part of the path, secured with cables, that started beyond the plateau. How could he tell Jiaying she would have to scale the summit on her own? Martin shook his head and knew she would not accept any excuses. Jiaying was stricter than any NASA instructor! This mindset not only applied to herself, but also to anyone hiking with her. Maybe he should try to see what would happen if he refused? But maybe not today, he thought. They were meeting his mother later this afternoon, and he did not want to be dealing with an angry Chinese girlfriend then.

  Martin thought about trying it anyway, thinking perhaps she was in a good mood today. Earlier, they had watched the sunrise together from the terrace of the mountain chalet. It had been so romantic, holding Jiaying in his arms in the subdued glow of dawn. He noticed she felt very light in his embrace then—like a butterfly—and he almost felt as though he had to firmly grasp her so she would not be carried away by a sudden gust of wind. So Martin blissfully held on to Jiaying, and he could have stayed that way all day long on the terrace with her if it had been up to him. He had to avoid getting sunburned up here in the summer-like weather, despite it being winter. He pulled his baseball cap down, took a deep breath, and continued on his way. He carefully avoided looking to the right or left, where the abyss and his fears waited.

  “It is about time,” Jiaying said when he reached the plateau, and she punched him in the side.

  “I shouldn’t have eaten that piece of cake earlier,” he replied. But the plum cake they served at the Steinlingalm chalet had been too tempting to decline.

  “You should not have eaten cake during the last few months,” Jiaying said. Martin had to laugh when she pinched the love handles above his hips.

  “Oh well, I’ll lose those three kilos quickly,” he said. Jiaying looked at him without saying a word. Instead, she pointed to a path marker that had been painted on a flat rock.

  “Fifteen minutes farther,” Jiaying said. Martin nodded. He would not try to talk her out of finishing the climb. Jiaying lifted her small backpack and put it back on.

  “I am going to lead, okay?” she asked. Martin nodded again. He was afraid his voice would fail him. Jiaying slowly walked to the left. He followed her and saw her reaching for an iron chain bordering the path that led down a few meters. Directly below his feet was the Bavarian upland, the beauty of which he could not admire because he had to avert his gaze, as otherwise he would almost certainly fall down. He focused instead on the laces of his hiking boots.

  “Slow and steady,” Jiaying said. She was only two steps ahead of him. He looked up and saw she was squinting, something she always did when she was worried. She was worried about him, and a sudden warmth swept through his body. At that instant, Martin would have liked to embrace Jiaying, even though he could not think of a less suitable moment for it.

  Oh well, he thought, and made it past the end of the chain. The rest of the climb was not secured, but it was also less dangerous. The path went to the right and upward, followed by a short iron bridge, and finally they were there. Martin felt like uttering a triumphant yell, but other hikers up here were gazing at the landscape in silent awe.

  He looked around and saw that the view was truly breathtaking. Jiaying stood next to him and he reached for her hand. He could see fertile, green land all the way to the horizon. Lake Chiemsee was shimmering dark blue below them, with sailboats appearing as white dots on its surface. It smelled of summer, which Martin could hardly believe.

  “Can you smell it too, just like in summer?” he asked.

  Jiaying smiled, and another warm wave flowed through Martin’s body. “Yes, it is...” she was looking for the German word, “dry grass… uh, hay.”

  “Very good. Exactly… hay,” Martin answered. Jiaying had been taking an intensive German course for several months and was much further ahead than Martin, who was studying Mandarin by himself. His mother would be surprised.

  He let his gaze wander across the wide landscape. The horizon seemed to be curving. Up here you could clearly feel you were on a sphere, on this place called Earth, which he had not seen for such a long time, and which was truly unique in space. How stupid did you have to be to leave such a place for such a long time? And why was he just now noticing this?

  “Come on,” Jiaying said. “Your mother is probably already waiting for you. Let’s go.”

  “And
for you, too,” he said.

  The descent was even worse than the climb for Martin. He let Jiaying go first and focused on the little panda trinket attached to the zipper of her backpack. The panda smiled. It was probably laughing at him right now. How could he make such a fuss, just because he would fall down several hundred meters if the sole of his boot slipped? In some areas he had to cross bare rock worn smooth by the stream of hikers. There he did not shy away from sliding on the seat of his pants, even if the climbers coming the other way cast him pitying glances. Yes, he should not have gone on this climb, but the other hikers did not know how hard it was to deny Jiaying anything. Martin felt his stomach cramping, and the muscles in his thighs trembled with exhaustion.

  To his great surprise, though, they arrived in the valley sooner than he had expected. The narrow path turned into a wide gravel road. If he slipped here, he would only end up on his backside. Martin took a deep breath. Below he could see the few buildings of Steinlingalm. The wooden benches in front of them were full of hikers eating Wurstsalat, strips of sausage, red onions, and chopped pickles in a vinaigrette. They were drinking Radler, a mixture of beer and lemon soda. He noticed his appetite was slowly coming back. He took his backpack off and held it in his hand by the handle. The back of his T-shirt was sopping wet. If he did not take a shower soon, he would start to stink like a polecat.

  Jiaying pointed to the restaurant of the mountain chalet. He shook his head and Jiaying smiled. She pointed to the left, where the cable car station was hidden behind a ridge. Martin nodded and smiled back at her. It was wonderful to understand each other without words. His mother would be preparing some food anyway—at least a cake.