Heirs of Earth by Sean Williams & Shane Dix

Author:Sean Williams & Shane Dix [Williams, Sean & Dix, Shane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: E-Reads
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

2.2.3

Lucia walked among the engrams as an angel would among mortals. And yet, even in the seemingly magical garment of her I-body, she felt flawed, fragile. The limitations of her mind were severe. Until she escaped the confines of her engram, and of her original, she would never be free.

I feel more like a golem than an angel, she thought. A creature of dust and clay, animated by words alone.

There was little time for introspection, however. She had four colonies to save, the last four in Surveyed Space: Zemyna, Demeter, Geb, and Sagarsee, due for extinction in that order.

“You’re asking us to leave everything we’ve built here and take a chance on you,” said Vince Mohler, civilian supervisor of the James J. Funaro, the mission sent to Zemyna. “It’s a big ask.”

“It’s either that or die,” countered Ali Genovese, military supervisor from Demeter.

“I know, but—” Ali’s civilian counterpart, Owen Norsworthy, sought the words to express his confusion. “It just seems so wrong.”

“It runs counter to programming.” Lucia said, stating the truth bluntly. All the mission supervisors had dedication to their missions programmed into them. They were bound by a powerful and partly artificial sense of duty to ensure that the missions ran according to the rules. That meant not abandoning them until a threat was clear and unavoidable and not even the certain knowledge of the destruction of every other colony was enough to satisfy those constraints. Until the Starfish actually appeared and began reducing the gifts to rubble, the mission supervisors were bound by their programming to try to keep things running as they had to date.

She had only noticed this on convening the meeting of the surviving mission supervisors. Earlier, after the mass gathering in Rasmussen, she had wondered how Sol had managed to convince so many of the remaining colonists to stay, while most of the survivors from destroyed worlds had chosen to leave. Why hadn’t it been the other way around? Surely those who stood in the firing line would be most likely to feel the threat, while those who had suffered losses would be most interested in staying to take revenge? It hadn’t made sense.

But now, watching the mission supervisors balk at abandoning their posts, even though they knew that death awaited them if they didn’t, the reasons were obvious.

“It runs counter to programming,” she repeated, “and that programming will kill you if you let it.”

“And how can we be sure you won’t run like you did in Rasmussen?”

Lucia turned to Cleo Samson, civilian supervisor of Sagarsee, who had voiced the challenge that must have been on all their minds. She wasn’t offended by the question—in fact she had anticipated it—but she doubted her transparent features would have conveyed that.

“You can’t,” she answered simply and honestly. “Nor can I guarantee that I won’t. Which is why I will need your help to ensure that I don’t.”

She had thought it through very carefully, analyzing her feelings during and after the attack of the Starfish and her awakening in Sol System.

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