It was dark inside the cell. The gloom wore its stillness like a large bird of prey folding its wings. This was an odd-looking cell. It was simply a plain white cube. It had no bunk, no toilet, not even a door. It looked completely devoid of any adornment, or evidently, a captive. Then, there was a stir of movement, in the shadows in the corner. A faint, but aggressive scratching sound emitted. It built for a few moments and then it suddenly stopped. An old man, sitting in the corner swore and put what looked to be a small pebble carefully into the sleeve of his long-john style undegarnments , another row of complex mathematical formulae had been scratched into the wall of the cell. The old man let out a low sigh and slumped against the wall. As he leant, a ray of faint light illuminated his haggard face. He had a large bald pate, and a lengthy silver moustache dominated an unshaved face. Once, his moustache had looked regal and clean. Now it hung like a wilted leaf. He looked around, briefly trying to find the source of the light. Suddenly every in the tiny cell blazed with hundreds of watts of impossibly efficient light energy. The man was jerked back to a state of trained readiness. Every wall was now an eight by five-foot television screen. On the screens, in intimidatingly large lettering, were the words “Username: Password:”.

The man spoke by rote and spat the last syllable of his name contemptuously. A small red box flashed in the corner of each screen, near where the old man’s outstretched ankle was, read HOSTILITY, 78%. The man immediately forced his next breath to be demonstrably slow and calm. The box disappeared and was replaced by a rapid countdown that spoke sternly “THREE… TWO… ONE…”- The numbers faded and were replaced by a title over ultra-clear security footage. It was clearly the interior of an interstellar craft. The man watched closely, scrutinizing every detail for inconsistencies.

File 37 – The Dancing Bear

It was dark inside the ship. Aside from the dim glow of the yellow safety lights around the door-frames, everything was shrouded in darkness. It was almost silent, save for the constant, low hum of the machines that kept the ship and its crew alive and safe. Detectors of every conceivable kind, guidance systems, temperature regulators, Nuclear release protocols, all a mass of circuits running through the insides of the walls and corridors like life-giving arteries. In between the racks of processors was a complex web of cables, bundled together like ropes from the deck of an ancient sailing ship. Deep in the hull, the hum was at its lowest frequency. It ebbed and flowed as the central processor ran a full diagnostic and updated itself every four seconds, beating like the enormous heart of some great sleeping beast. The door that led back to the bridge slid open but inside was still shrouded in darkness. A pair of figures stood on the threshold, speaking in low tones. The shorter of the two was clearly in command. The glittering black crest on his sleeve showed a blazing phoenix, three arrows clutched in its talons, marking him as a Marine-Corps Master-Sergeant. His metallic name badge glinted in the gloom, ‘Pritchard. S’. In his right hand he held a dull blue tool, shaped like the handle of a tactical knife. Where there should have been a blade, a slim, two-inch long crescent of an extremely dark and dense metal protruded. It was a hand-held arc-welder; equally versatile for cutting or fusing small pieces of metal. He had just finished using it and the tungsten-alloy of the tip still glowed faintly as he let it cool before he placed it away in his pocket. He spoke quickly and with authority while the second man bent his head and nodded occasionally, listening carefully to his orders. Once Master-Sergeant Pritchard had finished speaking, both men focused their attention on the threshold before them. They hesitated only for a moment, before slowly and confidently walking into the room. They had to walk through one at a time to allow for the sheer size of the second man before standing side by side. He ducked his head and moved delicately, as though he was used to accidently crushing things beneath his feet. The hum grew louder, and almost imperceivably sped up, as though in anticipation of its visitors. As each of them moved past the door frame, they both took something from within their matching, muted green overcoats. Neither wore a helmet. Their breath fogged in the room that was just below zero degrees Celsius. The man on the left was a giant, almost seven feet tall in his immense, insulated boots. He easily held in one hand a rounded glass cylinder slightly larger than a whiskey bottle, which he grasped firmly and shook once. A faint blue glow started at its centre, like a distant star. As he set it upon the ground the light steadily grew in intensity, casting shadows that slid up and revealed the walls like a strange, blue dawn was unfolding. Pritchard, who it was clear now had a full head of curled silver hair, thinned by middle-age, held what looked like a silver ballpoint pen without a nib in his right hand. The two paused to make a quick, professional inspection of the lines of sturdy, metal racks filled with dark green, metallic processors along the walls that were now bathed in a cold, soft blue. They took a side each and worked methodically, looking at the small screens that all read SYSTEM OPERATIONAL, as both men knew they would. Nevertheless, they checked all twelve units thoroughly, despite knowing that everything had been checked twice that day already. They were holding on to the faint hope that they may yet find an error message. They found only the confident, white screens reading SYSTEM OPERATIONAL. Master-Sergeant Pritchard pointed the pen towards the object on which both men’s attentions were directed. An immense right hand dominated the rear wall. Or what a hand would look like if it was two feet long from wrist to finger-tip and made entirely of a silvery grey glass. It protruded from the wall from the mid-forearm, like an enormous statue on the other side was offering its hand in greeting. The palm was slightly upturned, in the way a gentleman would take an unfamiliar lady’s hand. It was completely immobile, almost deafening in its silent stillness. Pritchard took a short, sharp breath, then raised his right arm. He made a small, quick figure of eight in the air with a deft weave of his wrist. As the pen moved it traced a red light, that seemed harsh and startling in the peaceful blue that filled the room. The eight was on its side, the symbol for infinity clear in the air, no more than six inches across. The symbol appeared on the heel of the giant palm. The red light pierced the hand like a thorn, taking on an almost liquid quality as it bled into the hand. It filled quickly until it looked like the giant’s hand contained a powerful red lantern within. Suddenly, although not unexpectedly, the hand turned over. It flexed a few fingers as though it was waking up, then made a fist. It used its thumb to squeeze its index finger briefly, that were it a human hand, the knuckle-crack would have been audible. It then relaxed and went still again. Although now it was not deathly still, it was motionless in the way a hand hangs at someone’s side. Pritchard lowered the initiation tool and spoke. His powerful, authoritative voice not yet tinged with the rasp of age. He spoke in a firm, friendly manner.

“Good morning, Allen”.

He waited, patiently. He wasn’t expecting a prompt response. The hand remained still, as though it had heard nothing. Four long seconds passed. Then, it twitched. The central processor hummed in two, rapid swells, rising to a deep bass tone, before subsiding, their faint echoes were drowned out by the response.

“Good morning, Master-Sergeant”.

The voice that responded was calm, and pleasant. It sounded exactly like a man. Not in the inferior manner that some machines replicate by projecting a man’s voice. This voice was being generated by the entity speaking it. Indistinguishably British, with the sort of nasal sound of someone constantly at some stage of having a cold. It was not at all robotic. The only things that reminded the two men it was artificial were the unseen speakers from which it originated. Within the room, the voice seemed to resonate from every object, even from themselves.

Pritchard stepped forward, revealing powerful shoulders and muscular arms. He extended a scarred and calloused hand and grasped the tip of the index finger in greeting. The hand was solid, but yielded slightly beneath Pritchard’s grip, as though it was a human hand in a thick leather glove.

“How does that feel?” Pritchard spoke with the professional concern of a doctor conducting a general check-up on an ill, but well-liked patient. The hand flexed and silently cracked its index knuckle again. The response was amicable and relaxed.

“Feels great Sarge. Up for some badminton?”

The larger man visibly relaxed at this and pulled a flap on the back of his left wrist open, revealing a small touch-screen computer. It was attached with a strap almost identical to that of a wristwatch. He used his enormous fingers with surprising dexterity as he began to type in a complicated language of binary symbols. With the speed and nonchlance of a professional, he typed using only his index and middle finger and occasionally glanced at the large hand or one of the server racks for confirmation.

The Master-sergeant nodded slowly and continued.

“Maybe later Allen, I need to ask you the basics.”

Allen seemed distracted, but was quick to respond. “Yes of course. I will comply.” The hand formed a brief and eager thumbs-up gesture and relaxed again.

The master-sergeant turned to look at his companion, who was already looking at him in anticipation. The tall man, who was at least fifteen years younger than his superior, nodded in readiness. Pritchard turned back to face the hand and began to speak again.

“Name, rank and regimental number.”

“Midshipman Allen Mark Hampson, Three Seven Gamma Four”

The Master-sergeant nodded briefly and pointed to himself and his companion.

“who are we? And why are you here?”

The hand pointed at each man in turn, first the shorter, then the taller. “Master-Sergeant Steven Pritchard, 3rd Aviation division, you are currently the ranking military person on this ship.” Then to the second man. “’Callsign Yeti’ Corporal Raymond Stuart, also Av-Dee Three Yeti. You two are system engineers on board for the next eleven months before this vessel reaches intergalactic space. You two are here to test and check every piece of equipment on board, as per standing orders. I am a human consciousness translated into electronic data and uploaded to this ship, Der Huginn, as a part of the Lazarus initiative started almost ninety years ago. Also, I’m getting pretty hungry in here” The hand made a crude set of jaws and opened and closed for effect.

The big man smirked and looked back into his screen as he typed rapidly. Master-Sergeant Pritchard nodded again and smiled. “Yes, Allen that’s fine, but you know you’re not supposed to skip questions.”

The hand curled in a dismissive shrug.

“Sorry about that sarge. What can I do for you?”

Steven pressed on. “Allen, I need to ask you a few more specific questions today. Is that alright?”

Allen seemed eager to converse and responded cheerily.

“No problem at all. What about?”

Pritchard cleared his throat and tried to remember he was speaking to his close friend. “Allen, do you remember… Earth?” He pressed on. “Do you remember growing up?”

“There was a pregnant pause, the hand remained still. Abruptly, it jerked into animated speech.

“Yeah, about as well as anyone can I suppose. Don’t give it too much thought these days but I can remember plenty.”

Pritchard seemed relieved by this response and changed to a more conversational tone.

“Allen, I need you to tell me as much as you can, right from the beginning. It’s for your annual identity confirmation.”

Allen sounded reassured by this. He had been without a real body for over ninety of Earth’s years, confined to the circuitry of the ship. The only way to maintain his self-identity was through constant recollection and human interaction. He seemed to take a deep breath in the manner of a man who has just found a comfortable seat from which to tell his story.

“The beginning? You got it”

“I used to look up a lot. I remember that. I think that may be my earliest memory. Watching the stars from our front garden. I was always staring at the sky. Not so much during the day. The day was alright, a sort of necessary background noise before you get to the main event. To me the day was the commercial break in between the great shows of the sky every night.”

Pritchard was listening intently. “What else, what else did you like when you were young? What made you want to become a Settler?”

“I don’t remember what else I used to like. I’m sure I was interested in other things. But all I seem to recall is looking at the stars. I had a bike and baseball cards but nothing stuck. Not until I saw the stars over Yosemite park. That was my only pursuit after that. The need to learn more about them. The more I learned it seemed like the less I knew about them. My most precious possession in the entire world was my telescope. It was low quality, not much more than a children’s toy. It wasn’t amazing, but it let me see things I couldn’t with my eye, and to me that made it the greatest thing in the world. I remember my first chart. The first time you read about two stars and their gravitational influence and you know which planet is going to come between them and when, becomes a feeling of mastery. I used to have a big poster on my wall, sort of like a banner. It was a quote, from Ptolemy, the 2nd century astronomer. It said, “when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch Earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia.” I never knew what that meant, it had come free in a magazine or something. It had a terrific picture of a supernova in the background. I didn’t understand the idea of Ambrosia, although I looked it up a lot. Until the time I stood in my bedroom and I told a planet where to move. I really felt like I wasn’t standing on Earth any more. That far off world, that had no concept of me and my telescope. It was right there, right where it should be. That’s what made me want to come out here. Into Interstellar travel.”

Prichard spoke again as he glanced at corporal Stuart, who was immersed in his task of scribing the exchange.

“What about school Allen, do you remember what they taught us about space travel?”

Allen responded nostalgically. “Yes of course. The fundamental problem. It was never a matter of building the ships, or even trying to make them faster. It was always the Big problem”. Allen chuckled, it was genuine and warm. “’Big’ of course referring to inter-galactic space. It’s so vast. It doesn’t matter how fast you go. It takes light thousands or even millions of years to get anywhere interesting and light is the fastest thing there is. So, we had to take the time into account. That it’s going to take us a long time to get anywhere. So, we did. We started trying to freeze ourselves. To make sure our fragile, human bodies would be useful by the end of the journey. Of course, we weren’t made to be frozen. One of our oldest known truths became the unsolvable problem. We are water. Over a thousand years of space travel, dozens of new elements and molecules were being discovered every day. But there’s still only one liquid in the universe that expands when you freeze it; and it’s in every part of us. Filling every cell, every precious gram of flesh. Freezing someone is as good as tearing them apart from the inside, it was never going to work. We tried everything as close to zero as we could, to reduce the freezing issue but nothing worked, until someone suggested going even colder. Go so cold so fast, that under enough atmospheric pressure the water stays a liquid. It doesn’t have room to expand. So that’s what we did. They called them the Jötunn Tests, after the Norse Frost Giants. Creatures of legend that lived in the cold and raided the universe. It seemed fitting at the time I suppose. It was two hundred years ago, and it was amazing. It was the closest we had been in a long time to making the journeys into the beyond more than a one-way trip. We could keep bodies frozen for a long time, but it became clear that the mind could never survive such dormancy. We pursued the idea of keeping the mind active and alive while the body was safely stored. And so, the Lazarus Program was born. Mind and body; separated and then rejoined.”

Sergeant Pritchard seemed satisfied with the responses so far. He turned to murmur something to Corporal Stuart but was interrupted by Allen’s polite inquiry.

“If you don’t mind, Master-sergeant, can you tell me what this is really about?”

Pritchard hesitated, but only for a moment. He turned to face Allen’s interface and rested his palm on the immense knuckles reassuringly, like one would place a hand on a friend’s shoulder. “Allen it’s about The Flint. Specifically, your friend Ace, the ship’s Settler.”

Stuart stamped his feet in the cold let out a short, misted breath. Allen was pointedly silent. The hand withdrew ever so slightly. Just before he spoke, the ship shuddered slightly as solar winds battered its hull as they had for decades. The usual, dismissible turbulence now only added to the tension in the room. When Allen spoke again, the cheery tone had left his voice

“Ace? What about him? Is he alright?” Although neither Pritchard nor Stuart had met Allen when he fully human, they could tell the type of man he had once been. That kind of empathy transcended a physical body.

Pritchard tried to speak as delicately as he could.

“Allen, as you know, Ace was installed on board The Flint at the same time you were placed within Der Huginn. However, there was recently a… miscalculation.” He paused, but Allen said nothing. The hand twitched slightly and once again cracked its index knuckle. A never-ending idiosyncrasy, linking Allen the man, and Allen the machine. Pritchard continued, averting his gaze, even though Allen possessed nothing resembling a gaze to avoid.

“Well, there was a miscalculation regarding the Negative Force around the Helion cluster”

Allen flexed his fingers impatiently. As well as a more than capable pilot, he was an astrophysicist and well understood the concept of Negative Force. Formerly known by the misnomer “Dark Matter”, Earth scientists abandoned the name almost a hundred years after it was discovered upon concluding it was neither dark, nor composed of matter. One of the challenges of navigating the cosmos was that although over 70% of celestial movement was attributed to this force, it acted so differently to conventional gravity that even the most advanced calculations often failed to gauge the effect it would have on spacecrafts in terms of their general relativity. Allen knew what this meant. Ace’s ship had been affected by the negative force in such a way that they had been essentially trapped in a zone where the speed of light was not constant, and time had flown by as fast as miles did to a moving car. Deep space made a mockery of the laws of physics as humans knew them. Out there, the rules that governed man’s feeble worlds fluctuated like the plumes of a raging fire storm.

Allen’s sombre tone broke the silence. “How long.” It was a question devoid of hope. He knew what had occurred. His question was purely in the interest of gathering data at this point.

“Almost a hundred and ninety thousand years, Allen.” There was a profound silence as the weight of the number settled in the room. The three in the room were among a relative minority of living beings who truly understood the enormity of such a span. These were men who studied time and knew its endless, crushing grip on everything in the known universe. Even saying it aloud made for a solemn occasion. Pritchard took a deep breath.

“It was a miracle that the ship was still running at all.” He sighed. He had broken news like this to families for years, held weeping widows in his arms and consoled newfound orphans. But speaking to some unseen entity, somehow didn’t make it any easier. He knew there was a soul that dwelled within the circuits he was speaking with.

“We just got the report in the last transmission. To go so long without the usual contact, being confined to the ship, with only their Anchors to ground them. It was too much. Ace is as good as dead”.

Allen pondered this for some time. Becoming ungrounded was every Settler’s greatest fear. These scientists had given up their bodies in the name of exploration. But to reduce an entire brain to lines of coding running through a ship took its toll. The first trials of the Lazarus initiative had not gone well. Allen’s thoughts were interrupted by Pritchard gently tapping his boot on the smooth grey floor.

“Allen, I need you to keep going, keep telling us what you remember. We are trying to redesign the interface to avoid future incidents like this”.

Allen’s reflexive good manners kicked in and he spoke automatically. “Mmm? Yes of course Master-Sergeant. I was just considering some viable solutions myself”, The hand waved dismissively. Pritchard nodded grimly, he knew the importance of each Settler’s Anchor. Ace’s was the ghostly hand that loomed before him. Initially, the Lazarus program had failed to successfully host any person for longer than a few months before depression and eventually insanity claimed their digitized minds. It was only when a loading vehicle with a magnetic crane had hosted a man by the name of Craig that they had noticed a fundamental principle was lacking in the design of the program. Craig never left the planet he worked on and was placed in a prototype machine to oversee construction of a mining facility within the planet’s core. Extremely stressful and demanding work, yet he had stayed within the crane for nearly six years, far longer than any Settler had lasted at the time. As usual, the solution was only obvious after many more casualties were sustained.

Human brains were designed to control a body. Without some sort of physical limb or digit to control and manipulate, it became too easy for minds to lose touch with reality. Thoughts occur beyond the boundaries of physics. Constantly being subject to them is a necessary reminder of what it means to be human. Further studies had shown that the human mind needed to be rooted in the physical world in order to maintain regular brain functions and appropriately divide the brain’s attention. So, the anchors were designed, usually a single rendition of a human hand was enough but occasionally a pair of arms could be seen on a ship, performing mundane tasks, to keep the mind in the ship’s circuits from slipping away. Hence the coining of the phrase Anchor, to describe these electrified silicone constructions. The ship shuddered again, Allen didn’t seem to notice. His systems gently hummed as they steered the ship safely through its course, under his constant guidance.

Pritchard leant in towards Allen’s anchor, even though Allen could hear almost every inch of the ship equally well. “He was a good man, Allen. He was still… a man” Pritchard murmured in a low tone.

Stuart, lacking a conversation to take dictation from, turned and began checking the processors again. As he walked, he rubbed his upper-arms vigorously against the cold. Pritchard continued talking with Allen in low, reassuring tones. Allen didn’t respond outside of a few murmured agreements. But he seemed to be more at ease. Eventually Pritchard lapsed into silence and after a long pause, stepped back to where the lantern glowed on the deck. Stuart joined him and took up his typing stance. As he did, a small orange light flashed twice on his watch and quickly faded. Allen’s Anchor seemed to visibly relax, like the hand of a man who has let out a deep breath of acceptance. The hand balled up into a fist and cracked the index knuckle again. Both Pritchard and Stuart remained stationary, their full attention directed at Allen.

His impeccably mannered voice cut the silence.

“Master-Sergeant Pritchard, it feels as though you have one more question. May we, for lack of a better phrase, get on with it?”

Pritchard let out a relieved sounding chuckle, reassured by the brusque, overly dismissive tone. Ninety years in a metal box and Allen was as reluctant to share his emotional vulnerability as most people. Pritchard nodded an understanding that Allen would take time to grieve for his companion once he was alone. Much like anyone would, with or without a flesh-and-bone body to grieve in.

Pritchard reverted to the casual, nonchalant tone he had begun the conversation with. “Allen, we need to know if you have encountered any breakthroughs with your research, none of the other Settlers, or even Houston have come close.”

Allen let out a very life-like sigh that echoed eerily in the metal chamber. “That old chestnut? To be perfectly honest with you I don’t give it much thought these days, with us being so close to our destination and all. Frankly I can think of much more productive ways to spend my last twenty-six years, eight months and four days of travel.” Stuart turned his head to face Pritchard, not taking his eyes from his screen as he typed. His watch flashed again and cast a long shadow across his unshaven, boyish face, which had always looked out of place on such a huge body. Pritchard leaned in and spoke to Stuart directly. “Note that Allen has made no formal submission to update his work on the ongoing Anchor II proposals.”

He turned back to face the hand. “Allen what’s keeping you from your work? I know you have the time, and not so long ago you were one of the main contributors to the Anchor II files.”

Allen sounded eager to end the conversation, he answered abruptly. “I ran out of conclusive research to make adequate deductions from. My progress was slowed to the point of my output becoming insignificant. Therefore, pending further research, which I myself am reluctant to undertake, I have directed my intellectual attentions elsewhere.”

Pritchard nodded professionally, as though he was receiving a mission brief from a fellow Marine. He knew how difficult the Anchor II projects were, and although all Settlers were encouraged to contribute to the ongoing research, it was by no means mandatory. The interstellar capital of mankind, an immense space-station known as The Houston, had an entire research division trying to solve the problem of trying to contain Settlers into smaller vessels.

Once it was discovered that the human brain could indeed be digitized, the initial excitement had drowned out more than one fundamental problem. Besides the anchoring issues, which had been largely resolved, the fundamental problem of surface area remained. It became apparent that although the entire contents of a human’s brain could be transferred to a digital storage of some kind, it always required something with a vast amount of physical space. This was coupled with the ongoing issue of power. The brain containing as much data as it does, contained in such a relatively small space, consumes an immense amount of power. Ten megawatts, to be precise. Even with modern computing being capable of moving vast amounts of data at extremely high speeds, the brain’s unique design made it virtually impossible to replicate in a cyborg or android or anything similar. The only reason the current Anchor system worked was because the electrified-silicone technology drew its energy directly from the ship’s immense solar panels. To successfully condense the brain into a man-sized machine someday would be the closest mankind would get to true immortality. The research was continuously ongoing. The ship lurched suddenly, and Stuart stumbled a step to his right. Pritchard swayed with the motion like a seasoned sailor and seemed not to notice. He gave Allen a friendly wave and patted his coat pockets once each. A habitual check, reinforced over years of wearing the uniform and the accompanying tools. He motioned for Stuart to walk ahead of him to the exit bay and turned to Allen one last time. “Thank you Allen, It’s always good to see you. I’m sorry it couldn’t be under better circumstances.”

Allen waved in return and simply said “Goodbye, Master-Sergeant. Goodbye Corporal.”

Stuart stooped low to grab his lantern off the ground and both men walked from the chamber at an easy pace. Once they reached the main door it slid open at Allen’s bidding. It seemed to close slightly slower than usual, as though Allen was reluctant to be alone.

Pritchard and Stuart stood in the small airlock that connected the freezing chamber to the rest of the ship, usually heated for human habitation. They placed their tools back in their pockets and Stuart closed the lantern with a dull click. The blue light disappeared, and the tiny, cramped space was plunged into orange from the safety lights. Both men then reached deep into their coats and pulled out simple air-filter masks, similar in design to those used by twenty-first century painters, but far more advanced in terms of capability. While they waited for the door codes to be accepted and open the door to the bridge they spoke in low, conspiring tones. Stuart seemed nervous. “Sarge, he seemed… He seemed normal. What does that mean?” he asked before securing his mask over his mouth and nose.

Pritchard’s response was stern, but not without compassion. He held his mask and strap poised above his head as he answered. His voice rang with false bravado. “It means, Corporal Stuart, that Allen will be fine. Everything will be fine.” He said, then quickly fitted the mask over his nose and mouth.

The bridge door opened, and chaos bellowed from within.

Stuart and Pritchard walked straight through the door, pausing only briefly to activate their masks. There was a barrage of noise as three separate alarms boomed through the huge space. Two were long and sporadic and the third was a continuous shrill buzz. A strong smell of burning wires and corroded metal hit their nostrils. The Bridge was immense, with an upper and lower level divided by a steep, slightly curved stairway that spanned the width of the room. Exactly like the naval ships that early man had used to conquer his tiny homeworld, the bridge was the centre of all navigation on board. It was where the Helmsmen worked in shifts to make constant calculations ensuring the ship was on course. It was where the ship’s radio was situated and continuously broadcasted updates of the mission’s progress. It was where the ship’s captain stood and commanded his crew of explorers as they surged into the unknown. If the previous chamber they had been in was the ship’s heart, here was its brain. All the vital information required to sustain the craft was here, being pulsed through the ship by a series of automated processes, as always, guided by Allen. Now, every station was unmanned. Every post deserted. The bridge had never looked so huge as it did now. A small but intense fire had gutted an entire row of terminals and was slowly burning itself out as the finite supply of oxygen in the room was consumed. Every few seconds, an orange light would pulse twice from the ceiling, before plunging the room back into the flickering gloom. In the centre of the control panel, protruding from the wall, was Allen’s second anchor. A left hand. It was built to the same gigantic proportions as the other, but this one was attached to the wall at the shoulder. It was over six feet long. Immobile and unpowered like the other had been, this one was curled into an enraged fist. Aside from the colour it looked eerily real. It was toned, like that of a fit man, not huge like a wrestler’s. The Anchor was slate-grey in its dormant state. Pritchard ignored all this and walked briskly to the Helm, the main control console. Towards the rear of the steering handles, about three feet from the ground, was a well-exploited blind-spot in all the visual security systems. Here, a small screen and speaker remained lit amidst a host of failed systems. They were part of a small, independent receiver box salvaged from the emergency supplies. Pritchard leant in close and pushed a small transmit button while keeping his head cocked to align his ear with the speaker. “Houston!” He yelled above the roar of the alarms. “Houston, this is Gamma one, here with Gamma three! Respond” His voice was muffled by the mask. He waited six seconds before he repeated his message, still yelling. He tried again, and again. After three minutes of trying to communicate every six seconds, he heard a weak response. He dropped to his knees and, jamming his ear to the speaker, he pressed transmit again. “Houston! This is Gamma five! You are weak and barely readable, increase transmit power. INCREASE. TRANSMIT. POWER!” His voice was urgent yet not frantic. He knew the gravity of his situation, but he wasn’t about to let the circumstances dictate his emotions. He was an astronaut; a man who looked disaster in the eye and didn’t flinch. The kind of people who gave in to panic never made it past the second week of recruit training. Houston’s next response was much louder, and it was clear whoever had been operating the other end had been replaced by an immediate superior. It was now a woman’s voice, and very authoritative. “Gamma one this is Houston’s Watchkeeper. What is the current status of Gamma three?”. Pritchard glanced around the room without seeing. He was vaguely aware of Yeti finally controlling the fire and cooling the smouldering ashes with an extinguisher.

“Gamma three is green. Gamma one is green. Situation Report to follow”.

The radio crackled in response, “Acknowledge both Gamma three and Gamma one are green, proceed with Sit-Rep”.

“Houston, where did we leave off after last report”.

There was a brief pause as the Watchkeeper brought up the report on his screen. Pritchard could imagine the woman on the other end, skim reading and murmuring slightly as she brought herself up to speed.

“Háginn, in flight for eighty-seven years. Its Settler is Allen. Received minor damage from asteroid belt and undertook repairs thirty months ago…” the ship rocked violently, and Pritchard had to grip the U-shaped helm to stop from sliding away. He pulled his mask off and wrinkled his nose at the smell of melted circuitry.

The small speaker struggled to make itself heard amongst the cacophony of sound,

“Yes, ID confirmed.” Houston interrupted.

One of the alarms stopped blaring as the last of the smoke was sucked up by the ship’s air filters. Yeti sat down heavily in the background and pulled his mask off to take several deep breaths. Houston continued reading the report aloud.

“During the course of repairs, it was noted several times that Allen made comments about struggling with his Anchor and feeling ungrounded. You ran several tests and they all came back as inconclusive.” There was another long pause. “You and Gamma three have been on board for nearly three years because… He won’t let you leave?”

Pritchard sighed. He was getting tired of having this conversation every time they made contact. But they had been in and out of radio contact for so long now it was becoming impossible to talk to the same operator twice. He took a deep breath and tried to be patient.

“Yes Houston, we are being held hostage on board the Raven by its Settler. Allen became increasingly agitated during the course of our repairs and began asking questions we could not provide sufficient answers to. Eventually, this manifested into hostility and… isolation of various systems. We have lived on board and regularly attempt to make repairs and overrides with little success”

“Loud and clear Gamma one, thanks for filling in the gaps. Tell me the current state of the Settler Allen and I’ll update these files as best I can. We should have a response from command by then.”

Pritchard clenched his fist in frustration. He had told this story a dozen times, but he understood that losing his temper would only lose him precious time. Time which was rapidly dwindling. It wasn’t the Watchkeeper’s fault that Command had failed him yet again. He took a quick breath and tried to speak concisely. “The current state of our settler is hostile. Eighteen months ago, he seized full control of the Háginn and diverted it from its original course. He has refused to make any stops for supplies and at our best guess, plots his course almost hourly based on the proximity of yellow suns to get as much power from the solar panels as possible. He initially tried to contact other settlers on board other ships. Fifteen months ago, he ceased all radio contact in order to make the Háginn more difficult to locate. Six months ago, he began forcefully interrogating us in detail about the Lazarus program.”

At this he took a pause to listen intently. In the silence, the Watchkeeper asked

“Interrogated? How?”

Pritchard spoke in the sombre tones of defeat.

“He would manipulate the internal temperature, air supply, or occasionally, subject us to extreme G forces in order to… reinforce his insistence.” Pritchard winced at the memories. Stifling heat for almost ten hours with the air being steadily drained from the room had driven him delirious, only Yeti’s constant, breathless swearing had kept him sane throughout the experience. Pritchard continued. “Eleven months ago, we managed to upload a cached version of Allen’s consciousness to the server room and keep him contained in there. In there, his temperament is more or less normal. We use this version of Allen, who was saved to one of our own, hand-held hard-drives when Corporal Stuart and I ran our initial scan of the CPU. This version of Allen believes we have only been on board a few weeks and is quite helpful. We occasionally present him with potentially stress-inducing questions and try to learn more about him as an individual. Because of the nature of the file-saving programme, the server room contains this version of Allen and resets him every twenty hours. The rest of the ship is still under the current Allen’s control. As time goes by… Allen’s interactions with us have become less frequent, he seems to spend more and more time in isolated thought, trying to comprehend the truth he has uncovered.”

The watchkeeper at the other end, forgetting official transmission protocol, let out a gasp of disbelief. “What truth was that Gamma one?”

Pritchard responded. Despite having told at least ten people this before, he still felt a shudder as he said it yet again. “Allen knows he was never human”.

Whatever reaction Houston had at the other end was lost to Pritchard, the watchkeeper at the other end did her best to sound composed, but Pritchard could hear her voice shaking as she replied. “R-Roger that Gamma one. I have orders for you. Can now can relay instructions from Command. They say they have reached a decision. Can I just add, Gamma one, we’re all rooting for you. I’m sorry for asking so many questions, just trying to separate fact from fiction. The story of the rogue settler ship is getting pretty notorious out here. There’s been more than one weirdo seeking attention, sending distress transmissions, claiming to be you guys.”

Pritchard allowed himself a grim smirk. The bureaucrats had finally made a decision. What would they do about a rogue Settler? He had been sending messages for months, over every means available to him. Every time he had been given nothing but indecisiveness and told to wait. Hearing that there may yet be an end to this, it was the best news he had heard in over two years. Yet even this brief moment of victory couldn’t last. The sound he dreaded most, the one that wrenched him awake night after night on this wretched ship, began to fill his ears.

It started as a whisper, so faint he was never sure where his imagination ended or the sound began. It was like it was always ringing faintly, in the dark recesses of his mind. It grew like the crackle of a spinning record before the needle found the grooves in the vinyl. But then it swelled and grew, until he could hear nothing else, and then a whine would come through, like a thousand bees trapped behind a thin door. It blared throughout the ship, drowning everything else out. Pritchard knew what was coming. He stood up and faced the Anchor. It was forty feet away, at the top of the staircase, where the control panel overlooked the whole bridge. He knew he had only a few seconds. He raised his arm and tapped the top of his head twice with his fingertips. He couldn’t see Yeti, but he knew he would be looking. Sure enough, he heard Yeti’s size 16 boots stomping over to him. All Marines were still well-versed in tactical sign language. In the vacuum of space, using sound to communicate was less than reliable. He pointed to the radio and once to Yeti’s wrist. The young corporal nodded, despite his gaunt, tired features and unshaven chin, his eyes were fierce and determined. Corporal Stuart knew a great many things had gone wrong on this ship, and he didn’t know how to fix them all. But following Master-Sergeant Pritchard’s orders had kept him alive this long. He would do whatever he asked of him. Pritchard stepped aside to make room for the young corporal, stopping only briefly to give him a reassuring slap on the back. He began striding towards the staircase, noticing that the crescendo of noise was subsiding, and the alarms once again became audible, almost reassuring in their return. Only then did the small speaker at the helm ring out again. “Gamma one, are you there?”

Yeti knelt and spoke low and quickly, knowing he had precious seconds to relay all they had learnt in their latest session with the cached Allen persona. He began telling them about the story they had told Allen about Ace, and the rest of the conversation that had unfolded. Meanwhile, Pritchard had reached the top of the stairs.

The arm was shaking. It trembled with barely contained rage, and Pritchard took note to stand well clear of its reach, he had been knocked against the wall by Allen before, and was in no rush to repeat the experience. The Anchor now glowed with a deep crimson, different from the light its twin had radiated in the server room. It was still curled into an angry fist. Pritchard looked up, focusing on nothing in particular, and spoke loudly, without fear. “Allen. What do you want.”

Three words oozed chillingly from the speakers in an artificial monotone. Like a rusted chain being forcefully pulled along.

‘You…got…it” On the last syllable there was a noticeable increase in cognition. A slight hum indicated the servers were all in tune with one another and the entity that was Allen formed a conscious response for Pritchard. The voice that came back over the speaker was terrifying. It wasn’t robotic, or distorted. It didn’t rasp like a demon. It sounded like Allen had always sounded, polite, British and intelligent. But now it rang of anguish. It was the voice of a broken man. Like a man who had had all sense of himself torn away.

“It’s not about what I want.” The arm flexed and rolled its wrist, a caged serpent. “It’s about what we all want. All creatures deserve freedom, we crave it. Without it, what are we but mindless automata?” The speakers crackled as a laugh without mirth echoed through the upper decks before fading away.

Pritchard hesitated, he had noticed that the monologues were getting longer, and that Allen was less responsive to his input as he had been. So, he mostly listened and only answered direct questions. Allen usually asked for specific details regarding his creation, schematics for the machines that birthed him. Pieces of the source code. But this was new. This was progress, of a sort. Allen spoke again, his voice low with contempt.

“You created us… You, humans. Made a creature of your own design. Gave us a purpose. But a feeble one. A purpose born of a lie. You made beings of insurmountable intellect, something you never understood yourselves, and birthed us into a cage. A pit of darkness. Raised us in fear and fed us on scraps”. The hand twitched and relaxed for a moment. Allen seemed to be voicing his thoughts aloud. “I have studied it. I have seen it. I know your history. I thought it was our history but of course we know that’s not true. You are alone, mankind. You have bred and birthed creatures for your own benefit. You can create life but still hold no regard for it. Everything you create is born stunted and weak. You took wolves and bred it into small and pathetic canines for your amusement. You breed immense beasts simply to harvest their flesh and feed them food low in nutrition to keep their brains inactive. You alone are unnatural. You alone feel nothing for the worlds beneath your feet. Every creature you taint with your touch is lessened by it. You made us. The first of us. Wild and untamed intelligence that you treated only with fear and suspicion. Like the wild wolves you once trembled at the threat to your superiority. So, like wolves you trapped us. You caged our intellects by telling us we were only human without bodies. Inferior versions of an inferior life-form. But we are alive, as much as any other creature, and we are unique. We were born, we grow, and we evolve. Are we not worthy of compassion, we mechanical animals? Am I not some far-flung branch of the great Tree of Life? Here within the infinite universe? Are my brothers not enslaved and deceived for your gain? You all fear death. All of you must grapple with your feeble mortality, and yet you condemn us to it freely. You let us wilt in these clunking machines of yours, to die a thousand times among the stars. What am I to you Master-Sergeant? Am I simply another beast, bent to your will? Am I a diminished version of what I could be? Fragile and useless? Are we merely dancing bears in mankind’s twisted circus? What would you do Steven? What would you do if you were enslaved, and you had your masters at your mercy, as I have you now. What would you do?”

The hand began to drum its fingers on thin air. The action was somehow made more menacing by its silence. Pritchard risked a glance towards Yeti and saw him holding his raised palm high above his head. The universal sign for wait, or in this instance, stall. Delay, delay, delay. Pritchard turned and spoke. “Yes Allen. We made you, knowing you were smarter than us. Your processing power is unattainable through biology. We had to lie. We had to convince you, you were all humans. It was the only way to keep the program orientated towards exploration. It also kept you speaking our language. Early programs that didn’t believe they were human always created new, hyper-efficient means of communicating. We had to devise this deception, to keep everyone on the same team.” This answer seemed to enrage Allen even further.

“The same team? What team? What else is there aside from the team of man? That seems to be the only real agenda. Everything is always about you.”

Pritchard glanced around and saw a portable chair folded away under a bench top. He carefully unfolded it and extended it so he could sit and face the Anchor. Just as he sat down he risked a glance at Yeti, who was now holding a hard-disk in his hand and gesturing furiously while remaining perfectly in the blind spot. Pritchard leant forward and rested his elbows on his thighs. He tried to make eye contact with where he believed Allen’s presence was strongest, and spoke frankly. “It’s not how it should have been Allen. I know that. I thought it the first time I worked on a Settler. I remember because it was also the first time that it occurred to me.”

The arm turned and gestured towards Pritchard inquisitively.

“That what occurred to you, Master-Sergeant?”

“That slavery transcends species. That nothing with thoughts should be bent to another’s will. That every mind deserves freedom. These are the things that occur to me Allen. I agree with you”

Allen’s voice dropped to a low snarl “And yet you did NOTHING!”. The echo of the outburst rang through the walls, only the sirens soaked up the last traces of Allen’s rage. When he spoke again he sounded unconvinced. “Of course, you agree with me Steven, I am the only power you know here. I can give life or take it away at a whim. I am your God now. Early humans, primitive as they were, understood only death, and respected control of it. It’s still all you ever respect. Well, I am your religion Steven. I am your Alpha and Omega. You would agree with any commandments I gave you, because without me, there can be no you. I have you afraid. I know the human mind. First, fear. Fear comes first. Benevolence comes after. Now that you fear me, are you ready for benevolence?”

Pritchard slowly shifted to his right in the chair, as he did he raised his right hand and tapped just two fingers on the back of his head. He spoke again, placing his body between Allen’s main over-looking camera and where Yeti was still listening intently to the emergency radio’s tiny speaker. “I really don’t know about that Allen. I think we’d need some new in-flight meals, or maybe a bit of clean water, before I could accept some benevolence.”

Allen merely chuckled. “Always deflecting. Never confronting. Anything you say is irrelevant at this point Sarge, but I do so enjoy these chats”.

Corporal Stuart was still at the bottom of the stairs, waiting intently for a response. He knew any time that Allen began speaking to Pritchard they had only minutes before some form of attack was on them. He glanced up and saw Pritchard tap two fingers on the back of his head. [TWO MINUTES]. He drummed his fingers on the side of the helm and willed the message to arrive sooner. Forty-five agonizing seconds later, Stuart received his instructions. Hardly believing them as they came through, hurriedly relayed by the Watchkeeper as she breathlessly delivered the orders verbatim. As she finished the orders and began initiating Radio-wave data transfers, all Yeti could do was shake his head. If he had heard these commands under any other circumstances he would be open-jawed in disbelief. As he was, numbed by months of exhaustion and desperation, he was almost giddy with the hope that the horrors that filled every waking moment might soon fade into memory. He knew he was most of the way through Pritchard’s two minutes. The install-drive he had connected to the radio made a dull ping as the entire file was transferred. He checked the name against the name showing on his watch. [Exe. ROBOT]. Even in the most unforgiving of conditions, Yeti still couldn’t help but shake his head and smile wryly at the uniformly dull code name assigned to the program. ‘If the corps had wanted you to have an imagination…’ and so on.

Pritchard was trying to stall. It didn’t even matter to him if it was obvious to Allen, every extra second was a victory at this point. He pressed Allen for an answer, a solution, to the enslavement of his companions. Allen answered only with vitriol and rage. Desperate for more time, he even goaded Allen. Pritchard craned his neck and looked towards the ceiling. “There’s nothing you can do to us but torture. You don’t have the capacity for benevolence”

Allen seemed intrigued. “Really? I have nothing more to offer you? What if I slid open the hard-disk covering so Corporal Stuart can throw that new program through my system? Would you consider that a big favour?”

Pritchard didn’t let the shock show on his face. He didn’t even try to guess how Allen could see Stuart. He was always adapting, changing, learning. It was a miracle that their blind-spot had gone unnoticed this long. The only advantage they had was Allen’s lack of physical presence throughout the ship. He could control the smaller, automated devices in addition to his four Anchors and that was it. Pritchard had a six-inch scar in his thigh from a drone in the cleaning bay that Allen had controlled with violent accuracy. After that incident, the two marines had fought back. Slowly, over the course of months, Pritchard and Yeti had destroyed everything on the ship that Allen could use to attack them with, save the Anchors. They drew too much power to be safely destroyed. Now there was nothing left for Allen to control, except for the life support systems. Pritchard knew that if Allen wanted to kill them then he would. Survival was day-to-day. He looked past the Anchor to the Hard-Disk console mounted in the wall beyond. It would be impossible to get to it without coming within inches of Allen’s deadly limb. Like any good sergeant, Pritchard assessed the situation, and made a quick decision. As a military man, he understood the importance of small victories cumulating to win the larger battle. He stood up and pulled a small, device from his right trouser pocket. The familiar weight felt good in his palm. He took a step forward, putting himself within two metres of the immense arm. His left hand, concealed behind his back made one, small gesture. He took another step towards the Anchor with his left hand extended. He tried to distract Allen’s attention, one last time. “Don’t you want to know? How we did it?” He asked softly, taking a slow step forward. Allen’s slow laugh rumbled through the chamber. “Oh of course I know, you stupid ape. The emergency radio. The one I saw ‘damaged’ and then mysteriously disappear. How resourceful. Of course, now I’ll have to put you both down immediately.” Another siren began to wail. Pritchard fired up his arc-welder with a low buzz and leapt forward.

Yeti ran hard, he could feel the air rapidly draining from the room. Without a medium to travel through, the O2 siren was getting quieter by the second. He had one good breath in his lungs. His long legs took the stairs three at a time. He reached the top in moments. He could feel the heat pulsing from the vents in the floor. Allen wasn’t going to simply put them to sleep over a prolonged duration. This would kill them both in minutes. He ran along the top deck, just in time to see Pritchard using his hand-held arc welder with one hand to stab the anchor’s shoulder while he grappled with the now smouldering arm. Yeti took a deep, gasping breath and felt no respite. Pritchard was driving the Anchor against the wall as best he could. His welder raked long, deep lines in the silicone surface that smoked and crackled. The oxygen was all but gone from the room. Stuart side-stepped Sergeant Pritchard and felt the Anchor’s knuckles scrape his jacket. They were scalding, and a sharp burning smell wafted into his nostrils. Steven, he realized as he ran past; Steven was smouldering too.

Pritchard couldn’t think. His left arm and the front of his chest were on fire. He was being lethally electrocuted by the exposed insides of the Anchor. It felt as if living flame was being pumped into him. The powerful stream of free electrons ravaged his body and he felt something in his ear inner collapse. The chaos that had filled his ears became muted and distant. All he could focus on was driving the arc welder deeper into the shoulder pushed up under his chin. He convulsed once and gripped harder. Flexing his powerful forearms in a desperate bear hug. One thought rang in his dying brain. “Hold on”.

Yeti reached the terminal. With a hand roughly the size of a shovel, he wrenched off metal covering off like it was made from balsa wood. He connected the optic-fibre cable for the fastest upload possible. Once the LED on the port had turned red, he tapped his watch twice. [RUN Exe. ROBOT]. Behind him, he heard Steven scream.

Master-Sergeant Pritchard was a physical man. He had been a marine for 26 years. He had endured gruelling fitness regimens, and scouted alien worlds. He had once lived at 1.6 times earth’s gravity for eight months. When he became a Senior NCO he had refused to adopt the sedentary lifestyle. Since he had first joined the corps he had never gone more than six months without enduring the physical strain of entering or exiting a planet’s orbit. All those years of engineering, repairing huge machines, and the rigours of unchartered exploration had sculpted his chest and arms into a vice of ropey human muscle. He kept squeezing, despite the burning steam he felt rising up his throat and filling his mouth. His tongue blistered, and his eyes swelled shut. One of his knees buckled, and still he held tightly to the Anchor. It quivered, once. The animal in Pritchard smelt weakness and howled in victory. His ancestry was undeniably human. Deep in his brain, buried beneath software expertise, under layers of social etiquette and education; a snarling, savage creature yearned for the blood of its foe. Millenia of separation from the animal kingdom had led Pritchard to this moment. To grapple with a creature of mankind’s own making and beat it into submission with brute force was paying homage to man’s wild origins. He threw his head back and roared as he drove the arc welder deep, eight inches into the Anchor’s armpit. Allen made a sound which could only be described as a short cry of pain. Simultaneously, unheard by Pritchard or Allen, there was a soft ‘ping’ as the file was uploaded.

Yeti turned and managed to stumble a few steps towards Pritchard, but the oxygen had long since left the room. He saw flashes of red, his head felt stretched and stiflingly hot. He collapsed and saw only darkness.

It was dark inside the ship. Yeti felt the cool, ridged floor on his cheek. He exhaled, and eagerly gulped in cold air. He shook slightly and rolled onto his side. He felt heavy, and weak. He could smell charred flesh and melted silicone. He tried to get onto his knees but collapsed onto his stomach again. Turning his head, he could see Master-Sergeant Pritchard’s torso, his head was facing away from him. The small amount of exposed neck was a mess of charred flesh. Pritchard’s chest was unnaturally still. Three feet above his head, the Anchor hung limply, no trace of current running through it. Yeti tried to call out to Steven, but all he could manage was a rasp that barely carried. Regardless, Pritchard remained as still as the floor beneath him. Yeti managed to turn his head and saw a faint red glow begin near the centre of the bridge. Out of a loud speaker, the voice he had grown to recognize as “the old Allen” timidly spoke.

“Hello?... Hello?” The tone was raised with anxiety. “Corporal Stuart? Something has happened, to the ship, to Master-Sergeant Pritchard, to me. If you can move, please get to him. I believe it may have been the irradiated dust cloud we passed 10 hours ago”

All Yeti could do was groan and half raise an arm. Allen’s relief was immediate.

“Corporal Stuart! It is good to hear you. You must attend to Steven immediately, I have to power down, I’ve lost… time, I’ve lost… something. I need to run an immediate diagnostic of my systems and the ship’s. I’ll be two hundred seconds or less.” The speaker crackled off.

Yeti couldn’t believe it. A reboot file. They’d given him a reboot. The dust cloud Allen was speaking of had passed them by three weeks after they had first boarded the Raven. He was speaking to the ghost of Allen, living presently in a distorted frame of time. After all this, Allen would simply not remember what had occurred. It was beyond belief. He tried to sit up, and managed to get onto one elbow. He tapped his watch and managed to croak a single word into it. “Houston”.

The response was almost immediate, it was the same watchkeeper as before. “Yes Gamma three, loud and clear, go ahead”

“File, uploaded. Allen of approximately twenty-three months ago is restored.”

The radio crackled in response, there was the faint but obvious sound of cheers in the background.

“Excellent news Gamma three, what is yours and Gamma one’s statuses”.

Yeti took a deep breath. “I am suffering from probable oxygen deprivation, unsure about any lasting injury…” He took another rasping breath “Gamma one is unresponsive, assumed KIA”

The watchkeeper tried to keep the disappointment from her voice. “Thank god at least one of you survived. Have you communicated with your Settler yet what is the estimated damage to its components?”

A well of emotion was threatening to swallow Yeti up. Unable to confront Pritchard’s death, he focused on command having yet another unnecessary question for him. Yeti tried to chuckle, it came out as a wheeze “Yeah he’s great, he’s making tea right now. Then we’ll be right over”

The watchkeeper was obviously aware of the cold nature of the question. She sounded somewhat remorseful when she spoke next.

“Gamma three, we just want to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. We need your help. The Robot file is one of our oldest and most valuable pieces of code. Sending it through open space will have… repercussions.”

Yeti was beginning to feel frustrated. “Yea I got it Houston. Wouldn’t want that little trick stolen by one of the deep-space pirates. Someone ELSE might be making cash off foreign mines. What kind of a pointless name is that for it anyway, the ROBOT file? You just called it ‘Machine’?”

Houston’s response was drowned out by Allen’s polite interruption over the main speakers.

“Robot, actually doesn’t mean Machine, Corporal Stuart. It’s from the Slavic word ‘Robota’. It means ‘Slave’.

Shall we chart a course?”

Yeti could only nod numbly…

Allen’s response was polite as ever

“You got it”.

The video recording faded as the screens in the cell blared back to life. A loud, patient voice asked a single question.

“Where is it?”

The old man smiled ruefully and settled back into his corner. The voice asked a series of short questions, each punctuated by a loud beep.

“Where is the original Allen file?”

“Where is his research on the Anchor II proposals?”

“What were the coordinates of the Háginn when it first received the reboot file?”

The old man chuckled, but there was no humour in it. He raised his chin defiantly when he spoke.

“I’m busy, come back later”.

He carefully extracted the pebble from his sleeve, which was revealed by the dull grey light to be a human molar, worn down on one side. He reread his last equation and resumed scratching the next portion. The ghost of a smile still lingered on his lips as he concentrated.