Chronicle of Nautilus

Chapter 21: Inside The Navigation Room

Simons walked the empty passages of the Navigator’s base, with each step he got closer and closer to the main control room. The voice of the AI was all over the loudspeakers of the place, it followed Simons from one room to another. Now that she had identified the intruder and red his profile, she attempted to reason with him. 

“Doctor Simons, nothing you do here can bring back your wife and daughter. You are a better man than to seek revenge,” she spoke was calmly and gently.

Simons figured that no harm would come from a conversation and replied. “I come here not for revenge; I come here for the sake of everyone. Your manipulations must end. The city and outer perimeter are two different places and neither should interact with another, yet you always come to us and we never come to you. So here I come on behalf of everyone. I do not care about the ‘toy’ Cyrus made for you, I do not care what you did to my family all I care is the future of my people.”

“Great future awaits them.”

“Do not take me for a fool! I checked the medical databases. I checked the composition of some drugs we are synthesizing at the labs. You have rearranged their structure quite a bit. I know, you are trying to toy with our genes and evolution And I believe this is only one of many atrocities you are doing behind our back. If your intentions are for the better of mankind, why not make your work public? Why not tell what your true intentions are?”

“I do what I am programmed to do.”

“What a poor excuse. There must be limits to your actions, but I have a feeling that you have forgotten them long time ago.  Do not lie to me by saying that you cannot reprogram yourself at will.” Simons walked at the same pace, never looking back. He had a strange sensation that the floor beneath his feet bent upwards. He pictured that the gravity on the further rooms must be working in a different direction.

 “You are so narrow-minded! The people on this ship are the sheep and me with Ermac, we are the shepherds. Who else can prepare them for the long journey and the colony ahead? Don’t you know the nature of humans to destroy themselves?”

“I believe in humans more than in machines.” Simons said coldly.

He came to the door with a rectangular panel in front of it, took out a thick glove made of shiny grey material out of his bag, put it on his right arm and put his hand on the panel. As the three dimensional scan checked his hand, the glove started changing and moving, taking shape of an elderly, wrinkled hand, and then it stopped, forming an artificial hand.

The door opened. Simons took the glove off, threw it away and entered the room.

“Fool, you couldn’t imagine the monstrosities done on the first colony ships, how deformed their societies had become. That is the reason, I and my sisters were put aboard the last ships’, to secure—“

Simons interrupted, “You can’t be sure what will happen during the centuries ahead. There are too many variables in here to be sure about anything. And talking about variables - you are the most dangerous of them all.”

A door closed behind Simons. Here it was - the most important place in the whole ship - the Navigation’s room. As Simons inspected the place Stacy continued talking. He did not hear a word she said.

It was a round room with a diameter of no more than fifty meters. It had one more entrance on the far left; many consoles with holographic screens trailed the walls. After looking at the complexity of a couple of consoles, Simons imagined that a thorough check of all stations would take four hours least. He felt compassion for Ermac, what a monotonous life that man must have been living.  In the middle of the room, elevated one meter from the ground, stood a chair. It had a table and many small monitors and multiple keyboards connected to it.

Another strange object in the room was a large glass cylinder. It stood directly on the opposite side of the room. Many small plugs coming from the ceiling hung inside it.

At first Simons thought he was imagining things, but as he got closer to the glass cylinder it became clear that there was a large window on its opposite side, a window to the cosmos. He had never before seen the stars from inside the ship. Simons came closer to admire the view, but the beautiful moment was interrupted by the voice in his head.

“Business first, please.”

Simons walked towards a massive console, located about ninety degrees from the entrance to the left and started tapping its keyboard. It took only a minute for him to find the database of ship’s maps. He enlarged it to the whole size of the screen.

“Take a step back. And freeze for a moment, I need to memorize it,” the voice asked.

Simons moved back and looked at the screen. He had never before seen the image of the ship from a perspective. The ship resembled an octopus. The city in the center, the head, was protected by a heavy bulk. The massive ion engines were located at the tips of eight fat legs extending outwards, forming a circle. The tip of the octopus‘s head, Simons figured, contained the room he was standing in. There were many small objects placed in three circles around the hull. Simons imagined they could be some kind of weapons, lasers or missile launchers. But why would Nautilus need to carry weapons was beyond him.

“Enlarge the picture on the bottom right.”

 Simons came to the console and did what he was asked. A chain of corridors leading from the city to one of the objects on the hull was depicted in it.

“Now scroll through the whole map. I want to see it all in detail.”

The scientist did as he was asked to.

“This will be it, thank you for your help. I will be leaving now,“ the voice said and slowly faded away.

“So, Stacy, I guess that leaves only you and me now.” Simons talked to the program while manipulating the console. To his surprise there were no passwords in his path to break, no firewalls to penetrate.

“Stop this, you do not know the consequences of your actions,” Stacy once again attempted to reason with the intruder, but to no avail.

Simons continued working his way through the network of Stacy’s created applications and other programs, deeper and deeper into her basic programing core. “You see, I can’t think of anyone who would miss you. Ermac can live without you, I can live without you, and everybody else I know can live without you. So what’s the big deal?”

The Outsider observed Simons from a distance. The creature noted that the console was totally detached from the propulsion system or steering controls. He heard that only the Navigator can control the ship and it must not have been lies. The chair in the center of the room must have been the main ship’s control panel. The glass tank could be closely related to it as well.

Simons was about to push the ‘initiated the shutdown’ button in Stacy’s core program when the main door opened up. He turned and saw a contour of an old tired man. It must have been Ermac He had hated that man for a long time. But now he understood that Ermac himself did not know many things Stacy had done or was programmed to do.  He tried to turn back to the console and finish the job, but he couldn’t. He only watched as his hand took out the gun from the backpack and launched two projectiles - one to the forehead and another to the heart of the old man.

The Outsider walked to inspect the body, and there, in front of him lay Ermac, his gray hair covered his face in a puddle of blood. The Outsider finally felt a slight relief; he did everything he came here to do. From now on things would get only easier.

 As he left and put Simons back in control of his body he heard the other entrance to the room open up.