Unlike most military ships in Alliance service, the Sled’s crew’s quarters were all relatively spacious and didn’t have major differentiation between Officers and Enlisted accommodations. Not surprising, given the duration of our mission. While space and mass were even more of a premium on an interstellar ship than a battle cruiser or freighter, other ships weren’t expected to be home to their crew for ten years or more. In planning the Children of Earth mission, there was the very real possibility that the crew would be mostly stuck aboard the Sled or our support ships for the duration, which meant a planned minimum of ten years with “home” being whatever space you were allotted.
To try and make things a bit more equitable and keep “cabin envy” from being a factor in the mission, there was very little difference between the Captain’s cabin and the maintenance engineer who’s functional role was “Janitor.” Sure, the designated officers quarters were located a little closer to their command stations, but crew quarters were distributed through several sections of the ship. There were no barracks sections, no hot bunking like on some Alliance patrol boats, as everyone had their own quarters. The only “different” cabins were those designated as doubles, where a couple could share quarters.
‘Brina and I shared a double, but there were others, as yet, not in use. In fact, there were more quarters aboard the Sled than there were crew originally embarked. It was part of the plan. Knowing how long the mission would be and how people tended to act when together, it’d been thought prudent to allow for social interactions that might justify a change in berth. Seeing some of our crew in action, I could see the designer’s wisdom in including a compact nursery in Medlab as well.
Laying alone, conspicuously alone, in our dimply lit cabin, I wasn’t really thinking too much about the ship’s accommodations. I was still thinking about the encounter, well in our past now, between that Alliance cruiser squadron and the Machines.
There’d been papers written generations ago about using von Neumann machines to spread Humanity to the stars. Even Uncle Elsoph had talked about it as being a possible use for his own designs. Essentially, the machines could be launched on high efficiency trajectories to any number of star systems. Once they arrived, they could start replicating and building mission specific sub units. The sub units would terraform suitable planets, mine and stockpile resources, and generally make the system suitable for the Human occupied colony ships that could come along behind them some time in the indeterminate future.
Over time, the machines would spread to other systems and make them ready for the wave of following Organic life. It was all very elegant and long term and very, very, unlikely to be implemented. Except, with the introduction of Artificial Intelligence, the plan made even more sense as a way for Machine Intelligence to spread itself with, or without, our coming along for the ride.
I’d seen the conflict between man and machine brewing for years. I’m sure others in the 34 Tauri system had too, but no one seemed to do anything more than write white papers, PhD thesis's, or paranoid ravings, about the potential problems. At least until someone in the Alliance had weaponized my Uncle’s Work and, years later, had to face the descendants of that work waging war on their Human creators.
And now, I was laying awake in my bunk wondering what would come out of it all. Or, maybe better, wondering what had already come out of it all. The Genie had been out of the bottle for years. It had only been a matter of time before Artificial Intelligence and Self Replicating Machines got hooked up into what amounted to a new form of life. New life had looked at the stars and decided to go. The question was, had we stopped them? Could we stop them? And, if not, when we met them deep in the Black, some time in the unforeseeable future, how would we, and they, react?
“You look sad, Mommy,” the voice said from the semi-darkness. AuroraBlue, speaking through my cabin’s speaker system. She and Blue had been mostly quiet since our arrival in Sol system, only speaking to me directly when no one else was around. There were times I thought it was a hallucination; a sign of madness. But I’d seen hints of their runtimes in the Sled’s Frame, and nothing else in my experience pointed to Madness. I’d accept that the big AI and a backup of my granddaughter’s Ghost had come along with us to Sol.
“Not sad, Little One. Just thinking. I’m sure you’ve seen the reports we received about the Machines back home and their starship. It’s a lot to digest,” I replied, looking towards the source of the voice but knowing there was no one there to see. Imagination or running process, AuroraBlue wasn’t physically here with me.
“We saw, Mommy. Me and Blue. We’ve looked at all the data sent from home. There’s a lot to look at. Years and years. Will knowing we didn’t see them following us make you happy?”
I laughed softly. They knew what I was looking for in all that information, but AuroraBlue was very careful in her choice of words. Not “they’re not following us,” but “we didn’t see them.” They knew as well as I did that 34 Tauri was a large system. It would be trivial for the Machines to hide another construction yard somewhere unseen.
“That would raise the confidence we’re not going to have to fight them here, Little One, but we both know that not seeing them doesn’t mean they didn’t build another ship. But thank you, if that really is the case.”
AuroraBlue’s voice giggled, and Blue’s pleasant voice spoke softly with it. “We did not see any evidence they’re following, Mei Mei. Given the situation in 34 Tauri as it was known, I do not believe a Machine starship is en-route to Sol. However, without additional information it’s impossible to accurately predict the odds of a follow-on expedition.”
I could only shake my head and smile, Blue was being pragmatic and eminently factual. There was simply no way to be sure. We could hope, but we couldn’t know.
“I don’t think that made you happy, Mommy,” AuroraBlue said a moment after Blue finished. I could almost hear the frown in her voice, then she went on brightly. “I’m sorry we don’t know what they’re doing back home, Mommy. But I think I know what will make you happy!”
“Oh?” I replied, sitting up in bed, looking in the direction her voice appeared to be coming from. “What will make me happy, Little One?”
AuroraBlue’s voice giggled again and the large display across the cabin over my desk flickered to life. Curious, I slid off the bed and stepped over to the desk to settle into the chair before it. On screen, schematic diagrams of the Sled were coming up to switch quickly from one section to the next. Along with the schematic, real-time views from internal feeds floated in the air by the main display.
“I have something to show you, Mommy. I hope you like it,” she went on as the view shifted through cargo sections, down past the well protected core of the ship, past Medlab and the Frame, towards the small ‘high value cargo’ section deep inside the core. It was where the equipment deemed “Mission Vital,” or “Highly Secure,” was stored.
As I watched, the view focused into a specific area of secure storage, then onto a bank of cold storage where a small fraction of the Sled’s “special cargo” of forty thousand frozen embryos were kept in suspension. Finally, it stopped on a specific canister labeled with the cryptic markings they all carried, identifying “who” the unborn was in genetic terms.
“One of the frozen cargo, Little One?”
I could almost hear a smile in her voice as she replied brightly, “Yes, Mommy! She’s yours. Yours and Mommy Sabrina’s, I mean.”
It took a moment for what she said to sink in. A daughter. Sabrina and I had a daughter? But how?
The voice of AuroraBlue laughed playfully before going on. “I know you and Mommy Sabrina can’t have a family the usual way, Mommy. So we accessed the samples you left with the Gene Bank when you first signed on to the mission. Me and Blue did. She’ll be yours. Real and true.”
I was dumbstruck. When ‘Brina and I married we’d actually considered the possibility of having a child through genetic combination. Though the technique had existed for years, it wasn’t often people combined the genetic material from two donor eggs to create one viable embryo. I would be able to confirm the identity of the embryo in the supercargo database, but the very thought left me speechless.
“Surprise, Mommy. Happy birthday. Merry Yule. All sorts of holiday present days!”
“I . . . I don’t know what to say, Little One.”
“You were Mommy to Lilybell, you and Sabrina, but you didn’t get to raise her. You’re Mommy to me too, both of you, but you didn’t get to raise me either. You should have a little one that’s really yours, Mommy. A daughter you can raise as a normal child. Not like, well . . .” her voice trailed off with a peal of giggles.
She was right, of course. I’d said far too many times that no mother in history had gone through the trials we had with Lily and AuroraBlue. Neither of them were even close to “normal” in the way most people thought of it, but we’d done our best. In the end, I always thought they’d turned out OK, perhaps in spite of our parenting. Now, I could only gaze at the sealed stasis unit and wonder whether we’d actually have the chance to follow through with my little girl’s gift.
My voice dropped to a whisper, “Thank you, AuroraBlue, I . . .”
“You're welcome, Mommy. I love you too.”
