Malfunction – Jennifer Campbell-Hicks

Malfunction

by Jennifer Campbell-Hicks

From his perch atop the ship’s wing, Lieutenant Everett Monson singled out a wire from the tangle of an access panel and examined it under the bright lights of the docking bay: 3mm gauge, red coating. Yes, this was the right one. He unhooked one end, thumbed the switch on his pencil-thin electrical prod, and inched it toward the exposed tip.

“Excuse me,” a voice said. “Am I dreaming?”

Startled, Everett jerked his hand. Wire and prod sparked.

“Ow! Damn it!” He stuck his singed fingertips in his mouth and looked around the cavernous bay. The last shift ended hours ago; he had thought he was the only one here.

An android stood below the wing. It appeared male and in its mid-twenties, although it was neither of those things. Also, it was naked. A perfectly sculpted specimen of humanity except for its neutered groin and eyes. No manufacturer yet had managed to replicate human eyes.

What bothered Everett was that it should not have been there at all. Nine more androids, exact duplicates of this one, stood unmoving along a back wall beside barrels and crates of unloaded supplies. They had arrived with a shipment from Coelus that afternoon. Only this one had activated.

The android’s eye lenses clicked and widened. It studied the huge metal doors at one end of the bay, now closed against the vacuum of space, and a series of portholes along a far wall. Visible through the windows were the curve of the space station and the blue-and-yellow surface of Coelus far below. The android then turned its attention to the small fighter ship upon which Everett crouched. Then to Everett himself.

“Fascinating,” it said.

“What?” Everett said, taking his fingers from his mouth. Already the tips were red and blistering.

The android’s neck jerked in a mechanical spasm. “I’m sorry if I startled you. You should have a doctor look at your hand.”

An apologetic machine. Funny.

“Android deactivate,” Everett said.

“Excuse me, but are you talking to me?”

“Android deactivate.”

It chuckled. “I would enjoy the marvel of an android. But even if there were such a thing, I would not qualify as one.”

“Christ,” Everett muttered.

One of the other mechanics must have reprogrammed the android and suppressed its voice control. But Everett did not have time to waste on a practical joke. He was under orders to have the fighter repaired by 0600. Now, thanks to this ill-timed interruption, he had a fried wire to replace before he could continue to hunt for whatever was causing the ship to glitch.

He could ignore the android, but it would probably persist in making a nuisance of itself. Better to deal with it now.

Everett tucked the prod into his tool belt and remembered at the last moment to turn it off. Didn’t want to toast his own ass. He scooted backward on the fighter’s wing on hands and knees and slid down a ladder to the bay floor.

The android watched as he opened a panel in its chest to reveal the metal framing, wires, and lights of its insides.

“How fascinating. This is a remarkable dream.”

“Androids don’t dream.” Everett opened a smaller panel inside the first, unhooked the power core, and took it out. The android gave him a serene smile but did not shut down.

“What the hell?” Everett said. “What are you?”

It raised its eyebrows in an eerily human gesture. “An interesting question. What are any of us? A priest might say we are the soul. A psychiatrist might tell you we are the mind. A biologist would say we are molecules or DNA. Who is right? Only God knows for certain.”

“Uh, right.” Everett replaced the core and shut the panels. He took a communicator from his belt and punched a code.

“Yeah,” answered a female voice.

“This is Lieutenant Everett Monson in Docking Bay Delta. I have a malfunctioning android in here. Could someone come take it off my hands?”

She paused. “Is it an emergency?”

“No. But it’s a big annoyance.”

“Both of the night-shift techs are out on calls right now. I’ll send the first one who’s free.”

“Thanks.”

He ended the call.

“You are a lieutenant?” the android asked. “That would make this a military vessel, correct?”

“Space Station Gamma, in high orbit around Coelus.”

The android looked with new appreciation around the docking bay crammed with ships, both operational and not, and recently arrived supply containers. “This is the future, then.”

Everett snorted. “Hardly. It’s 2630.”

“How fascinating.”

“You think a lot of things are fascinating.”

The android flashed a grin of artificial white teeth. “I suppose I do. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that life is full of surprises.”

“So says the android just off the assembly line.”

“I have lived much longer than you.”

Now Everett grinned. He had the machine dead to rights on this one. “You were manufactured six weeks ago on Coelus. It says so inside your chest panel.”

“I was not. I was born eighty-one years and four months ago in Omaha, Nebraska. My name is Marcus Wolasky.”

Everett ran his hands through his hair in agitation. The android had no visible power source, and now it also needed a memory wipe. He would get someone back good for this one.

“Where did you get that name?”

“My mother gave it to me.”

“Christ.”

“What does Christ have to do with it?”

Everett laughed. “Not a damn thing.”

“Then you should not take his name in vain. My name, though—you recognized it. Your reaction gave you away.”

“You got me there. The Marcus Wolasky was the father of spaceflight.”

“I am? Quite extraordinary.”

“You are not Marcus Wolasky.”

“Why do you say that? Because you think I am an android? Are there not things here in the future that, despite your best efforts, you cannot explain?”

“Maybe. But this isn’t one of them.”

The android considered that. “Would you like to test me? Ask about my life, and I will answer.”

Everett tried to remember what he had learned in school, but it was not easy. The hour was late, his brain felt fuzzy and his fingers throbbed. Besides, he had little interest in pre-space history even on a good day.

He knew the basic stuff. Wolasky had been a professor and a pacifist who protested every military action the U.S. embarked on, at least until the world’s political structures fell apart after a generation of global warfare. If not for his discovery of faster-than-light travel in the late 22nd century, humans might never have gotten off old Earth. Still, no one knew about Wolasky’s genius until after he was found dead in his basement workshop. When the workshop was cleaned out, his family found models, diagrams, formulas, all theorizing on spaceflight. It was a treasure trove.

But whatever Everett knew about Wolasky—and more—could be programmed into a data chip. The android probably had access to every detail of Wolasky’s life, which meant the game it proposed would prove nothing.

“I don’t have time for this,” Everett said. “That ship won’t fix itself. So if you don’t mind—”

He stopped. Great. He was asking for permission from a machine now. The android had the gall to wave its consent.

Grumbling to himself, Everett headed across the bay to an adjacent storage room for a replacement wire for the one he had fried. When he came out, the android was nowhere to be seen. All was quiet. Maybe a tech had come to take it off his hands.

He climbed the ladder to the ship’s wing but froze halfway up. The android had its back to him and its head poked through the access panel.

“What the hell are you doing?” Everett said.

The android did not move. “What is wrong with the ship?”

“Get out. You’re not programmed for ship repair.”

“I don’t need programming. I’m a professor of electrical engineering, and it appears the basics haven’t changed much.”

“You are not Wolasky.”

“I am.”

“You also said you were dreaming.”

“I fell asleep in my workshop before I woke up here, but I have decided this is not a dream. It is a vision, given by God to show my path.” It peered over its shoulder at Everett. “If you are right that I am a malfunctioning machine, you lose nothing by letting me look. If I am right. . .”

“Fine.” Everett threw up his hands. “I’ve run diagnostics, been through the whole system, and I can’t find the problem. So go ahead, genius, and fix it.”

The android nodded solemnly, as though it had not noticed the sarcasm in Everett’s voice, and turned to the access panel. It examined the tangle of wires, then several thumb-sized receivers and transistors. It hands twitched as it ran them over buttons, switches, and indicator lights.

“Careful,” Everett said. “Don’t want to touch a live wire and short-circuit the ship. Not to mention yourself.”

“Shhh.”

This was a waste of time. What did the android expect to accomplish without checking the diagnostic reports first?

After a few minutes, it pointed inside the panel. “This receiver is damaged.”

It deftly scooted back on the wing so Everett could lean in closer. He took a flashlight from his belt and pointed it at the receiver. A hairline crack ran along its length.

“Damn. How did you see that?”

“These eyes are remarkable. I can focus on an object much more closely than I can with my own. But my own eyes have not worked properly since I was sixteen.” It gave him a frank look. “Do you believe now that I am who I say I am?”

He did not. Still, Everett pitied the machine. “I think you’ve been programmed to believe you’re Wolasky,” he said. “Whether you are or not is another matter.”

“I suppose that is good enough. Shall we get down? I have never liked heights.”

Everett walked to a table in a corner of the bay—a round slab of synthetic wood balanced on a spare supply barrel—and the android followed. After he laid his tool belt on the table, he filled a cup with energy drink from a dispenser and sat on a crate that passed for a chair. It felt good to get off his feet.

The android also sat. “Now that your work is done, I hope you will answer some questions for me.”

That seemed a pointless exercise—an hour from now, the android’s memory would be wiped—but Everett did need a break. “What do you want to know?”

“When did I die?”

“Five hundred years ago, give or take. Here. . .”

He touched a wall, activating a holomonitor. Bay workers used the holo to track imports and exports to the station, but it also linked to the primary archives. The latter function is what Everett accessed now with the push of a few buttons, and the holo started to flip through photos and vidclips. Wolasky teaching a college class in his trademark tweed jacket and wire-rimmed glasses. Wolasky at a protest at the Pentagon, holding a sign that read, “No war is good war.” Wolasky seated at a table across from a congressional panel, speaking into a microphone.

The android hummed and nodded thoughtfully.

Everett stopped the slideshow on a photo of room, dimly lit. Windows near the ceiling looked out at ground level over a yard of grass and trees. Diagrams were taped and pinned to every inch of wall space and fastened to the corners of a blackboard on which dozens of equations were scrawled in chalk. At the center of the clutter, head resting on his desk, was Wolasky as an old man. His cheek was pressed into a pile of papers, and his glasses sat askew on his nose.

“This was right after he died,” Everett said.

The android sat very still. “I see.” If a machine could look pale, this one did. Then it said, “How far have we spread among the stars since then? Since my death?”

Everett wiped the photo and brought up a map of the Milky Way. He pointed to a dot. “Here’s the Sol system, where Earth is. This,” he pointed to another dot, “is the farthest system we’ve colonized. And these,”—two dozen dots grew brighter—”are systems where we have colonies.”

“Where is Coelus, where we are now?”

Everett pointed to one of the dots farthest from Earth.

“It is what I had hoped for.”

“Don’t get too excited. We haven’t done as well as some species have.”

The android looked delighted. “We have made contact with other intelligent life forms? Are our relations with them peaceful? Have we traded knowledge to advance our civilization, and theirs?”

If only, Everett thought. “The first ones we came across, the Lacerta, almost wiped us out. That was back when we hadn’t yet gotten out of our home system. They had better technology, and their attack was unprovoked.”

“Lacerta? As in Latin for lizard?”

“I don’t know about any Latin, but this is them.”

Another swipe of buttons and Everett pulled up archival footage of the Lacerta, all scales, teeth, and claws. The stuff of children’s nightmares.

“They do look hostile,” the android said.

“It took twenty years of war and some damn fine soldiering to beat them. We added their technology to our own and colonized their planets.”

“After them?”

“The next two, we didn’t wait for an attack. Not worth the risk. We wiped them out quick.”

The android stood, alarmed. “That cannot be true.”

Everett remembered then that the android was programmed with pacifist sensibilities. He should have kept his mouth shut. He should have said the universe was one big happy commune. Now the android would probably march up and down the station with a picket sign, shouting about peace and love.

“The galaxy isn’t a nice place,” Everett said. “Competition for habitable planets is cutthroat. It gets bloody.”

“It is wrong.”

“The hell with right and wrong. This is about survival.”

“Did it occur to you, or anyone, that some other species might have attacked the Lacerta long ago, which in turn caused them to attack you? It is a cycle of violence with one way to end it: peace.”

The android sounded so righteous. Feeling a need to defend humanity, Everett cleared out the Lacerta footage and pulled up photos of humans with their heads ripped off and guts spilled out. Blood and body parts littered battlefields. Everett could almost smell the decay as he flipped through the images.

“See this? They didn’t care about peace. All they cared about was planetary expansion, and we were in their way. Insects to be exterminated.”

“That does not matter.”

“Like hell it doesn’t.”

“I did not work all those years to develop my theories so humanity could slaughter other intelligent life forms. That is worse than genocide.”

Everett bit back a retort and reminded himself he was not arguing with the real Marcus Wolasky. He took a sip from his cup and swished the warm liquid in his mouth before swallowing. It helped him regain some equilibrium.

“Stand on your soapbox if you want, but done is done,” he said. “It’s a debate for the historians now.”

“Not for me.”

The android straightened its shoulders. Its expression was one of stubborn determination.

Everett became suspicious. “What are you thinking?”

“When I am back in my workshop, I will destroy everything. No research means no spaceflight, which means no genocide.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Many people have said so. And no offense, Lieutenant, but you cannot stop me. You are from five centuries in the future.”

“Christ Almighty.” Everett leaned across the table and glared at the android. “You are not from the past, and as soon as a tech shows up, you will be taken to have your memory erased.” He stood and started to pace, agitated. “Why do I even bother arguing with you?”

“Because you know I am telling the truth.” The android’s voice was deep and low. “You are afraid you made a mistake in talking to me, and you are scared for what will happen to your present when I awake in my own time.”

Everett stood with his mouth agape.

Before he could think of a coherent response, a man walked into the bay and to their table. Everett was grateful for the diversion. The man was older than him, with hair gone gray and skin starting to sag along his jaw line. A badge clipped to his pocket said: Paul Woods, Technical Specialist.

The man saluted. “I got a call for a broken android.”

“Here you go. It needs a complete memory wipe.”

“Yes, Sir.” Woods turned to the android, which was leaning against the wall, arms folded. “Android deactivate.”

The android smiled.

Everett sighed and tried to banish the weariness from his voice. “I already tried that.”

With a chuckle and a luxurious stretch, the android said, “Do not worry. I will go peacefully.” He nodded to Everett. “Thank you for taking time to speak with me, Lieutenant Monson. It has been very enlightening.”

Woods and the android left, and Everett sank back onto the shipping crate. He stared into his empty cup. Did he believe Marcus Wolasky had somehow jumped through time? He supposed he did, in the same way he believed in predictions of the end of humanity on this date or that. He knew he was crap, but he could not shake the question: What if? What if it’s right? What if we’re all about to die?

So what if he had sat across from Marcus Wolasky, father of spaceflight, and the man who did so much to change the course of humanity would return home to destroy his research? The human race would never explore the stars. The Lacerta would wipe out every trace. No space station. No Everett. End of story.

If that were the case, Everett had taken the best course of action. A memory wipe would stop the time-traveling Wolasky from remembering anything he had learned here.

Feeling relieved, he set the cup on the table and buckled on his belt. The ship still needed repairs, and the work would occupy his mind. He did a quick inventory of his tools.

Flashlight, check. Replacement wire, check. Prod. . .

The prod was not there.

It took Everett a moment to understand what that meant.

He sprinted for the bay doors, barreled down a hallway and went left at a junction. He had to catch them before they got to the lifts.

Everett rounded a corner to see the android press the prod to its forehead. It started to shake. Woods jumped back.

“No!” Everett yelled.

He was too late. The android’s lenses popped out and rolled away. Fingers curled into useless balls. Its body shook for several seconds before it tipped forward and fell to the floor, smoke pouring from vacant eye sockets, ears, and nostrils. The air stank of smoke and charred synthetics. Everett’s hand shook as he knelt and took the prod from its rigid fingers.

Behind him, Woods breathed hard. “It said it was sorry but it couldn’t have its memory erased. It needed to remember when it went home. Then it said goodbye and fried itself.”

“Well, we’re still here, and the space station is here, so I think its plan backfired.”

Woods’ voice took on a tinge of panic. “Excuse my frankness, Sir, but what the hell is going on? Their base programming forbids them from, well, from this.”

Everett looked at him. “Do you believe there are things that defy logic? Things that can’t be explained?”

Woods cocked his head, confused. “You mean ghosts? Demons?”

“I was thinking time travel.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Everett stood and tucked the prod into his belt. Woods was right. It was nonsense. He prodded the body with his boot. The synthetic skin had melted like candle wax, revealing a mess of metal and wires. “Take this piece of junk to the compactor.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Everett watched as Woods grabbed the android by its feet and dragged it away. Feeling dazed, he returned to the bay and sat at the makeshift table. The holo still displayed photos from the Lacerta war. Everett backtracked to the photo of Wolasky dead in his workshop.

In the photo, Wolasky’s head was turned to the side, but part of his forehead was visible. On impulse, Everett zoomed in for a closer look. At the center of Wolasky’s forehead, beneath a thatch of white hair, was a circular black mark no larger than what might result from a poke from an ink pen.

Or an electrical probe.

Everett’s spine went weak. Could Wolasky have really jumped to the future and, in sending himself back, inadvertently caused his own death? He took several deep breaths. Of course not. That was a ridiculous, crazy, stupid idea.

He shut down the holo, stood on shaky legs, and walked out into the docking bay. He had a fighter to fix.

Jennifer Campbell-Hicks lives in Arvada, Colorado, where she finds time to write in between her two full-time jobs as a journalist and a mother of three.

Malfunction - Jennifer Campbell-Hicks, 4.5 out of 5 based on 12 ratings