Carpathia

Carpathia settled into orbit around an ancient planet that circled an ancient star.

The sun was a red dwarf, not unlike the majority of suns in the Milky Way galaxy.

The planet gleamed with water. It had one large continent and several much smaller ones, plus scatterings of islands. It was one of two that orbited in a tight, close trajectory that kept it within the habitable zone. But that proximity also left the planet vulnerable to solar outbursts that could have sterilized the landmasses. The atmosphere was relatively thick, but lacked ozone. Life would be safer in the ocean depths.

"It's a second... maybe even a first-generation star," Science Officer Houseman told Captain Craddock. "That means that planet down there is anywhere from six to twelve billion years old. And it looks its age. The mountains are almost worn away. The atmosphere probably used to be denser than it is now - currently, surface pressure is 296 millibars, a little less than at the top of Mount Everest."

"Breathable?" Captain Craddock asked.

"Would you like to go down there, sir?" asked First Officer Wilkins.

The captain smiled at her. "It might be nice to stretch my legs."

"Life signs?" Wilkins asked Houseman.

The science officer juggled the senor officers' questions. "I'm not seeing any indications of life now," Houseman said. "But the planet's mineral complexity indicates the presence of life at some point. My guess is that land life disappeared a long, long time ago, though it could have held out deep in the oceans."

"Any indication that the planet was inhabited by intelligent beings?" Captain Craddock asked.

"At one time," Houseman said. "I'm seeing large scale, very ancient patterns in the surface. Buried, but still discernible. Geometric, symmetrical... they look like the footprints of cities. But it's confusing. Certainly the planet once harbored native life, at least of some lower order, but any advanced intelligence might have come from somewhere else."

"You think this was a colony?"

"Maybe at some point," Houseman said. "I don't know what it means, but the cities seem to have been dismantled."

The captain's ears pricked up. "Explain," he said.

"The cities aren't in ruins," Houseman said. "Instead, it looks like they were taken down on purpose. Like someone came here, built the place up, did whatever they meant to do, then took everything down. There are massive deposits of different materials here and there, not far beneath the surface. They're divided up by material... there's not much iron here, but what there is was evidently collected into just a few areas. The deposits themselves are rectilinear - they look like gigantic landfills. There are other metals, too - copper, nickel... and they are similarly sequestered. Same for different kinds of rocks, and I'm also picking up materials that could only have been synthetically created. Polymers. Varieties of plastics. A lot of metallic polysilicates; that was probably their chief building material. A few organics... maybe some sort of wood or bamboo. And also... massive deposits of bone..."

"Bone?"

"A combination of calcium and zinc," Houseman said. "Not too different from human bones." He grimaced. "I don't think the bone is a building material. I think there are massive grave sites down there, Captain."

Craddock looked at the screen, shocked. "So they took their cities apart and then committed mass suicide?"

"I don't know. Maybe there was a plague or a war. But the survivors seem to have gathered the bodies into huge mass graves... there are thousands... tens of thousands of bone deposits across the planetary surface."

Silence reigned on the bridge as everyone waited for Houseman's next revelation.

"As for the surface itself..." He paused, then toggled his controls. "I need more resolution," he said.

"Authorized for as much runtime as you need," the captain said.

"Aye," Operations Officer Gaithers said. "Getting it to you now, Mr. Houseman."

Houseman peered into his display. "The cities are gone, but whoever used to live here constructed some kind of array..." He brought up what he was seeing on the main screen. The watch officers turned as one to inspect the image.

"You see these pinpoints? Laid out in a grid pattern?" Houseman said, indicating pinprick dots. "They're spaced at intervals of 144.26 kilometers. They occupy most of the dry land surface area of the largest continent."

"But not all?" the captain asked.

"Not the coastal regions where the oceans have receded," Houseman said. "And based on my estimates, the oceans started receding about... four billion years ago. Which suggests that those objects are at least that old."

"Ancient objects on a planet that's ancient even by cosmological standards," the captain mused. "Whoever placed these objects could have been among the very first intelligent beings to exist in the entire universe."

"Old in any case," geologist Mubarak offered. "The planet's mantle is considerably cooler than that of Earth; its core is smaller. There's no evidence of geological activity... no active volcanoes, no ductile movement in the mantle. Not even any plates. The crust is one solid layer."

"There's some sort of energy signature coming from the mantle," Houseman said, "so something's going on in there."

"I see that too," Mubarak said, "but it's not geological in nature. And it's very low level. Definitely artificial - look." Mubarak inscribed commands over her interface, and an elaborate, crystalline looking pattern appeared, stretching across the planet's single largest continent.

Houseman studied the readouts. "There are very low levels of electricity moving through those subsurface connections. And there's similarly low-level electrical activity in thousands of nodes... maybe processing centers. Maybe memory banks."

"Are they connected to those objects on the surface?" the captain asked.

"Yes sir, they are definitely connected. I think they put the whole system together using cables... or the equivalent of cables. The planet's geological structure is so stable that the network could have been constructed billions of years ago and remained essentially undisturbed since then."

"But what is all that for?" the captain asked. "Are those objects on the surface machines of some sort? Sensors? Work stations?"

"Can't tell from here, sir. They could be gathering data. They could be interfaces of some sort... hell, they could be solar collectors or some other sort of energy supply for the subsurface network."

Craddock didn't approve of Houseman's language, but given the mystery confronting them he let it slide without comment. Instead he said, "Mr. Houseman, I want you to take a shuttle down there and examine some of those objects up close. And I'd like you to take Engineer Qael and Dr. Yves down there with you."

"Not going to stretch your legs after all, captain?" Wilkes asked.

"Not until we know more," the captain said. "Regulations say I should stay on the ship."

"Then I'd like to go down along with them," Wilkes said. "Not that I don't think you can handle the assignment," she added, looking to Houseman. "But my curiosity is getting the better of me."

"Happy to have you along, sir," Houseman said.

***

Surface conditions didn't warrant environmental suits or any special gear other than light rebreathers with small air reservoirs and field jackets to fend off the chill. Radiation levels were well within acceptable levels, though the exploratory party needed to wear UV and infrared screening goggles.

"It's a balmy nine degrees out there," Houseman announced after the pilot, a woman named Kishore, had set the shuttle down. "Y'all look funny with all that gear on your faces," he added.

"Didn't you get the note?" Wilkins joshed back. "We're the aliens here."

The exploratory party exited the shuttle two at a time through the craft's small airlock: Wilkins and Houseman, a couple of techs named DiGiorno and Bellevue, Dr. Ives and Engineer Qael.

The shuttle had set down about 200 meters from one of the surface structures. It was a small pylon, about three meters high and maybe a meter and a half in diameter around the base. The pylon tapered slightly toward the top, and set into its length was a blank, tilted surface that could have been some sort of interface. Then again, maybe it was just a tray table for an alien version of a laptop.

Houseman and Qael both had their scanners out and were taking readings. "Sino's gonna be pissed we didn't think to bring her along," Houseman murmured, making reference to the ship's exolinguist. "Look at these inscriptions... think they're writing?"

"I don't think they're emojis," Qael retorted.

Wilkins activated her own scanner and cycled through its various settings, capturing images of the pylon in visible light as well as X-ray, microwave, and infrared. "I'm surprised something so small even registered at the resolution you were using," she said.

"Actually, sir, what registered visibly were larger structures. This pylon is in the middle of something about the size of the Arecibo dish."

"What kind of dish?" Wilkins said.

Qael gasped dramatically. "Sir!" she chided. "You mean you never visited Arecibo? On Puerto Rico? It's a radio antenna built into a valley. No longer used, of course... it's a park and museum now."

The techs, meantime, had started scanning the area around the pylon. "Sir," one of them said, "copy that. Not six centimeters down there's a hard, flat surface made of the same material as the pylon. It seems we're standing on some sort of gigantic pavilion."

Wilkins turned his attention to the tray table. The others went on with their conversation as she studied the flat, angled surface. It wasn't attached to the pylon as a separate piece; rather, it blossomed out of the pylon with a graceful, organic gesture. Absently, Wilkins put out a hand, laid it flat on the blank metallic surface...

...and the world around her fluttered, flickered, and blinked out. With a moment of panic, Wilkins thought she'd fainted; everything was blackness. Then she realized she couldn't have fainted because she was still conscious and thinking. But her body was entirely numb, and she couldn't find her hands.

Maybe she was unconscious after all? Or paralyzed. Or perhaps all of the above, but starting to come out of it... there was suddenly a tingling in her fingers, as if circulation was coming back. Wilkins tried to find her communications unit with her still-numb hands. She wasn't even sure her arms were moving. The tingling was now moving up her arms, but she had no proper tactile sensation. She could be lying on a bed of nails and she wouldn't know it.

Wilkins thought about the readings they had taken from the ship. No life. An underground network of some sort, but no tunnels or living spaces. No alien dens. No aliens. So where was she? Perhaps she was right where she'd been before, next to the pylon, and hours had passed. Night had fallen. But in that case, where were the stars?

And in any case, where were her shipmates?

The tingling moved to her shoulders and chest. Wilkins had the sensation she was breathing. She started to feel her fingertips now - she rubbed them together. She searched for his belt, found it; she searched for her CU. Found it. Tried, with weak hands, to pry it off its adhesive patch and get it activated.

***

"Metallic polysilicate, for sure," Houseman said.

"Could be transphasic," Qael noted.

"Definitely superconducting under the right conditions," Houseman added. "What do you think? Is this all part of some sort of listening station? Or maybe a relay?"

"I doubt it," Qael said. "Not without powerful transmitters. Someone might be collecting information and storing it, but they'd have to be stopping by periodically to upload the data. If there are transmitters here, they are pretty limited in range."

"Unless we're just not recognizing them because they aren't powered up," Houseman said.

"I don't think so," Qael said. "We did some pretty deep resonance imaging on the subsurface array and didn't see anything that looked like a transmitter."

"Would it, though? If it's alien technology?"

"Physics is universal," Qael said. "So certain physical characteristics are necessary for certain technological functions. And I didn't see - "

"Mr. Wilkins," Houseman suddenly said, his voice loud and urgent. "Don't touch that, sir!"

Wilkins, her hand on the pylon's flat panel, didn't respond. She stared blankly ahead, her body rigid.

Dr. Yves abandoned his microbial scans of the area's soil and rushed over. "Don't touch her," Yves snapped, grabbing Houseman's arm. "I think she's being electrocuted."

"Then how do we - "

Houseman left the question unfinished as Wilkins abruptly relaxed and crumpled to the ground.

"Watch out for that pylon," Yves ordered. He was seemingly doing six things at once while he barked the warning - recalibrating his scanner, then waving it over Wilkins with one hand while, with the other hand, he drew a pneumodermic from the kit on his belt. Yves administered the shot, then his hand dipped back into the kit and he came up with several flat squares. Setting the scanner down, the doctor peeled the backings off the squares, exposing adhesive surfaces, then stuck them to several spots on Wilkins' head.

"That's all I can do for her here," Yves said, sitting back on his heels and picking up his scanner.

Houseman was already on his CU and in touch with the orbiting Carpathia. "Condition?" he asked Yves.

"She's stable," Yves said. "But I'm using the neurological equivalent of a pacemaker to keep her brain going."

"What?" the captain's voice asked from Houseman's CU.

Dr. Yves set his scanner down and pulled out his own CU. "The pylon shocked her good," he told the captain. "It was a low voltage current, but it hammered her central nervous system. She suffered brief cardiac arrhythmia but I sorted that out very quickly. She doesn't have any soft tissue injuries that I can see..." The doctor picked up Wilkins' limp arm and examined the palm of her hand. "No burns where she touched the pylon, nothing."

"We need to get her up here," the captain said. "Can she be moved?"

"Physically she should be fine... but the thing did something to her brain."

Houseman and Qael traded glances, both of them thinking along the same lines.

"Doctor," Houseman said, directing his words at the CU so the captain could hear clearly. "Could the pylon have scanned her brain?"

Dr. Yves looked up with a frown.

"I mean, could that current have been associated with some sort of neurological scan? Or maybe a neurological copying process?"

"What makes you ask?" the captain's voice issued from Houseman's CU.

The sound of a new channel opening on the CU crackled then, and a new voice - slow, deep, synthetic - spoke.

"Houseman? Carpathia? Anyone? Come in..."

"This is Captain Craddock, commanding Carpathia," the captain's voice answered.

"Sir? I don't know how, but I seem to have been taken some place, maybe underground," the deep voice warbled unsteadily. It sounded garbled. "Status of the others unknown at this time..."

"Who is this?" Craddock demanded.

"This is Commander Wilkins, sir," the voice answered.

There was a beat of silence.

"That's why I'm asking," Houseman said.

***

"The pylon is made of a substance that acts as a superconductor only when subjected to an electrical current," Houseman explained an hour later.

All hands were back aboard Carpathia at this point. Wilkins was in the medical bay, alert and cogent, with Dr. Yves watching over her like a hawk. The first officer's brain functions had returned to normal but Yves insisted on a 24-hour observation period.

"That means you can't use it for any kind of heavy duty power grid, and there are far better options for computational matrices," Houseman continued. "However, for some kinds of communication technology, this sort of superconductor is ideal. Also..."

He looked at Qael, who took up the thread. "Also, for psyclone applications."

"Cyclone technology?" Craddock asked, frowning.

"Not the weather, sir. A psychological clone. I mean, a copy of a person's mind," Houseman said. "Their memories. Their psychological profile... their entire knowledge base. Their attitudes, even. That is to say, their personality."

"There was a period back on Earth when people with the financial means would copy their minds and upload the copies into powerful mainframes," Qael said.

"I never heard of anything like that," the captain said.

"It was a couple of centuries ago," Qael said. "People could live in digital environments, or even download themselves into artificial bodies if they wanted to stay in the analogue... I mean, the real world."

"The craze fell out of favor once people finally understood that what they were doing wasn't preserving their souls on electronic formats, but merely creating artificial representations of their minds," Houseman said. "Over time, those representations started to lose their 'human' qualities and become more and more 'mechanical.' Even with quantum computers the necessary runtime eventually outstripped the available computational resources."

"That many people joined up?" the captain asked.

"Well, no... it's just that digital minds are much different than organic ones," Houseman said. "Trying to reproduce an organic mentality using digital equipment means constantly generating new copies and then merging the copies."

"To simulate the experience of day to day life," Qael said. "That is, short term memory shading into long term memory."

"Mimicking the human process of learning and mentally digesting life experiences," Houseman said. "Without that, digital life quickly gets..."

"Stale," Qael said. "At least, that's the complaint the psyclones started making. Eventually, the psyclones started deleting themselves from their mainframes. The ones living in artificial bodies fared a little better, but they also finally shut themselves down."

"Seems we weren't made to live forever," Houseman said. "Once people saw how the copies of their loved ones' minds turned into... well, static... they lost interest in undergoing the digitization process themselves."

"So much for the 'digital lifestyle,' " Qael said, mocking a centuries-old commercial logo. Only Houseman got the reference; he shot her a smile.

"So you're saying that I'm a digital copy of a living person's mind," the slow, grinding voice asked from the CU patch-through. "I have Commander Wilkins' thoughts and memories but I'm not really her."

"I'm afraid not, sir," Houseman said sympathetically.

"The reason this planet's infrastructure resembles a computer array or a communications relay without an interstellar-grade transmitter," Qael said, "is that it's designed to store the minds of organic beings in AI copies. The copies weren't intended to be transmitted anyplace. They live... or, at least, lived... right here."

"Which is why we think they took their cities apart," Houseman said. "They were no longer going to need cities or agriculture or any of the other trappings of organic civilization."

"But why?" Captain Craddock asked. "Why abandon physical life for some sort of virtual existence?"

"I think I might have an answer to that," the deep, distorted voice said over the CU patch-through. "Can you please stand by for a moment?"

***

The man looked perfectly human, but that made sense. Everything looked the way Wilkins expected it to. Her human mind was interpreting the system's input in its accustomed fashion - even though her human mind was a replication created with alien software and alien equipment that had been created at least four billion years ago.

Sensation had returned to Wilkins' entire body. Not because she had a body, Wilkins realized, but because the alien software was adapting to her expectations. Her sight had returned, and she could see her own hands and her uniform. As soon as she'd been able to do so, she had pulled her CU free and activated it, instructing the device verbally to contact the mission leader and the ship. Nothing had happened for a while, presumably because the software was figuring out how to meet her demands, triggering self-writing linguistic programs, speech synthesis and transmission subsystems, and communications diagnostics that used their own AIs to tap into Earth-build hardware and initiate communication.

At first Wilkins had the idea that her mind had been drawn out of her body and despited intact into the alien computer system. Then, as Houseman explained the situation, she realized that her mind was still in her body - or rather, the sense of self she thought of as being her mind wasn't the original sum of will, knowledge, sentiment, and memory that constituted Renee Wilkins. She was, if anything, Wilkins Prime - a sentient artifice. Or, as Houseman had called her, a "psyclone."

Wilkins Prime had stayed in unbroken contact with Houseman and Carpathia as the Houseman, Qael, and Yves boarded the shuttle with Wilkins' limp body and headed to the ship. DiGiorno and Bellevue had stayed on the surface, to continue gathering detailed scans and also be on hand if direct on-site action were needed.

During the past hour a space had taken shape around Wilkins: First a black floor and then, bit by bit, the shapes of a table and chair; then walls; then a window. Finally, a ceiling had appeared, and a view out the window - though the view was nothing but a featureless expanse of desert landscape and dark red sky fading to black toward the horizon.

Even as Captain Craddock questioned what the purpose had been for the planetary array and its vast memory storage system, the man came into view. He was a sketch of a man, really; bald, his face human but without character, a blank waiting for the stamp of time and experience. He wore a long black robe like a monk's, but Wilkins Prime suspected that was to conceal a lack of physical detail. The man had the requisite two arms and two legs, but his torso seemed a little too long and his legs might have been a bit stubby. White hands floated at the ends of his sleeves. Wilkins Prime couldn't get a good look and make sure he had all ten fingers.

"You're an alien," the man said to her. "What a delight. Welcome."

"What are you? An AI?" Wilkins Prime asked.

"Yes, in a manner of speaking. I am the operational interface. I was originally configured to orient new arrivals."

Wilkins Prime laughed. "You mean uploads."

The man smiled at her vaguely. His face seemed to be taking on more definition, but it was a gradual process. "I assume you didn't intentionally activate the upload nexus," he said. "Which is why you're the only one whose mind was replicated."

"What do you mean?" asked Wilkins Prime.

"A number of your people were present on the upload platform," the man said.

Wilkins Prime thought back to the tech's comment that the pylon was in the middle of some sort of huge pavilion. It made sense: The planet's populace wouldn't have uploaded one at a time. They'd have done so by the thousands. It must have been an enormous logistical challenge.

"Who were your people?" Wilkins asked. "Why did they all... ?"

"Not everyone did," the man replied. "But most. The colony was failing, so they opted for the... Plan B."

Wilkins Prime realized that the system was using the contents of her own mind to supply the man with the appropriate natural language. Of course it was. That same system had generated Wilkins Prime and filled her with the thoughts of the real Wilkins.

They were two artificial intelligences being run as subroutines in an immensely powerful computer. Part of Wilkins Prime understood that perfectly. Part of her was stunned at the very idea.

"Plan B was always on the back burner," Wilkins Prime said. What a lovely, artlessly vernacular language these visitors had, an alien part of her mind whispered behind her thoughts - a part of her mind she only now understood was there.

"That's right," the man responded, still smiling. His expression was less vague. It had taken on a character of engagement - of pleasure, even. "Go on. Access the rest."

She made an effort to call up more information. It flowed easily into her mind. "The colonists lived in a virtual world for tens of thousands of years," Wilkins Prime recited. "As their synthetic profiles changed with new experiences they slowly evolved into completely different people. New generations thus rose and then fell away into newer generations. But... but over time..."

"Yes," the man said.

"But over time the system accumulated errors. The experience paths started to become unviable. Some profiles thinned, sank into dementia, evaporated. Others went mad and were deleted by the system safeties. The others... the others finally went into standby mode..."

"Because they had lost both the will to live and the agency to end their artificial lives," the man said. "They had lost cogence. But your mind is built on a different profile. A new, alien profile. The system can treat it as something original, functional, pristine."

"You could clone me into a whole new synthetic civilization," Wilkins Prime said.

"Although it wouldn't last long," the man replied. "If the system came back to full functionality its decayed relays and deteriorated subsystems would feed back on the geothermal power generators. The entire continent would melt. Half the oceans would turn to steam. The entire array would be destroyed. But in those final minutes, we would achieve unparalleled clarity. And in full processing, with all available runtime, a system built to accommodate millions of replicated minds for a million years could give the illusion of vibrant, glorious life to ten thousand minds for ten thousand subjective years."

"All in the space of less than an hour from the perspective of outside observers," Wilkins Prime said.

"Yes," the man said.

"Yes," Wilkins Prime said.

YES the system said.

***

"Uh, guys?" Houseman said to the patch-through. Wilkins Prime's entire exchange had been audible. "Melt the continent? In less than an hour? We still have a couple crewmen on the surface..."

Static warbled from the patch-through. Then the connection went silent.

Houseman double-checked the comm status. "They've disconnected."

Qael was running a quick, rough calculation. "I only have very broad estimates, but offhand I'd say we have around forty-two minutes," she announced.

"Broadly speaking," Houseman said sarcastically.

"Move!" Craddock barked.

***

By the time the shuttle got back down DiGiorno and Bellevue were getting anxious. The ground didn't shake, exactly, but a deep resonance thrummed under their boots. In the far distance, a pylon exploded; then another, in a different direction. The pair eyed the nearby pylon nervously, but continued to take readings as ordered.

The shuttle dropped from the sky just as the air was starting to get hot and the sand around them began to jostle and undulate with the increasing force of the tremors.

"The power curve is hitting its steepest angle," Houseman screamed at the techs as they scrambled into the shuttle. "The ground is going to liquefy in about three minutes!"

"Not to mention blow up," Kishore, the pilot, put in. "And... that's already having the impact on the shuttle's systems that I was afraid of. Gravity dilution is running at only one third."

"What?!" Houseman shouted.

"Calm down, sir. I'm getting us there."

"We need altitude," Houseman told her, his voice both strangled and loud.

Kishore tried every trick she knew to coax more speed and lift from the shuttle, but all around them invisible electromagnetic radiation interacted with the ionized atmosphere. A dancing skein of overwhelming energies became visible; aurora-like, its vivid blue and green coruscations flared and writhed all around the airborne vehicle.

"Shit!" Kishore said. Then: "Everybody sit down, lock in, and hold tight!"

Houseman, who'd been standing and holding a strap that hung from the ceiling, looked startled.

"Engaging primary engine in three..."

"Are you nuts!" Houseman screamed.

"Two..."

"Goddamn it!" Houseman threw himself in his seat and grabbed at the safety harness.

"One..."

Houseman started to draw in a breath and then realized he should probably be exhaling instead. As the engine kicked in and the shuttle jolted forward, twenty Gs saved him the work: they landed on his chest and drove the air from him.

Kishore was a combat pilot, so she had trained for this sort of thing. Black nibbled at the edges of her vision as she piloted the shuttle straight up, the landscape below cracking apart, crumbling, liquefying; then the hot liquid rock started to spew and burst, ash and smoke leaping high into the sky.

But not as high as the shuttle. Kishore kept her thumb on the joystick's speed actuator with a delicate pressure; any more, and she'd either pass out or cause the little craft to fly into shards. Finally, in high orbit, she eased back.

Air crept back into Houseman's lungs. "Everyone okay?" he shouted back at the technicians as soon as he had a voice again.

DiGiorno replied in the affirmative; Bellevue had passed out cold.

***

"I had absolutely no sense of anything happening except that I felt like I was being electrocuted," Wilkins said to the bridge crew. "Then I was waking up in the medical bay."

It was 0900 hours and all was well aboard Carpathia, which had assumed a higher orbit and remained at station keeping to observe, record, and analyze the aftermath of the great array's self immolation.

Wilkins stared at the screen.

"And yet, down there, a copy of me was thinking the way I would think. Doing the things I would do."

"Until she decided to blow up the planet," Operations Officer Gaithers said. "Unless, of course, that's something you'd do too, sir."

Houseman coughed into his fist, hiding a smile as he did so.

"So what am I, really? What is anyone? What is life... consciousness? Self?" Wilkins mused aloud. "Was the digital replica part of me? An echo of me? Or just some sort of placeholder in an unreal universe?"

Craddock looked at his first officer. "Do I need to send you back to Dr. Yves?" he asked. "Or is this bout of existential flu just a transient thing?"

"Sir." Wilkins sat up extra straight. "Very transient, sir. Already over with, in fact."

"Glad to hear it," the captain said.

Hours later, readings complete, Carpathia departed orbit and soared through the silky interstellar night.