Critical Mass (Expeditionary Force Book 10) by Craig Alanson

Author:Craig Alanson [Alanson, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2020-08-04T06:00:00+00:00

To help me decide, I reviewed the list of sites that Skippy wanted to visit. Some of them sounded interesting, some of those were too dangerous to approach in my opinion. “Hey, Skippy. I have a question about this list.”

His avatar appeared. “If you’re asking why I didn’t put them sites in alphabetical order, that is because-”

“That’s not it. I see you listed sites in order by travel time, that was very helpful. My question is, why bother going to these sites at all?”

“You’re kidding me, right? Jeez, I explained this. We have to know which of my memories are accurate and which-”

“No, we don’t.”

“No?” He was flabbergasted, staring at me in disbelief. “Do you not understand what-”

“What I don’t understand is why I should risk two starships, and over a hundred civilians, to figure out which electrons in your memory are recording the truth. We survived just fine for years without the memories you recovered.”

“First, my memory storage does not rely on electrons, dumdum. Second, we have not been ‘just fine’. We have been flying blind, not knowing-”

“Hold on a moment, OK? I don’t want to get in an argument, and I don’t want you to think I don’t care about how this affects you. My question is, how does this affect us? I’m asking a practical question, you understand that? When we get back to Earth, I will have to answer a lot of questions about decisions I made out here. To prepare, I have to write up reports.”

“Ugh. Joe, you hate writing reports to justify your actions.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it. I’ve been thinking about this recently. If we risk our ships to verify your new memories, I need a reason how doing that is important to humanity.”

“Dude, seriously, you can’t see it?”

“No, I can’t. At this point, it’s ancient history, Skippy. We can’t do anything to change the past, and I really don’t see how what happened affects us now. We know the truth now. That doesn’t change the fact that murderous aliens are coming to Earth, and your memories don’t do anything to help us stop them. Does it?”

“No,” he conceded, being grumpy about it.

“Do you see my problem?”

“No. Maybe. Joe, is this your way of punishing me for what I did?”

“No. No way. I forgave you. That was a low-down, rotten thing you did, but I understand why you did it, and I believe you are sincere about regretting your actions.”

“Joe, when I realized what I did, I regretted my whole freakin’ life.”

“Right. This has nothing to do with punishment.”

“OK. Listen, how about this? You talked about aliens coming to Earth, and not being able to stop them.”

“Exactly. That’s why we have to bring as many people as we can to the Beta site.”

“The Beta site won’t be safe, if other Elder AIs wake up.”

“I know that, Skippy. There’s no point worrying about that, because we can’t do anything about that.”

“Um, I’m not so sure about that.”

What he said next blew my mind.

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