Emma XYZ
Dec 2, 2022 6:02:57 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Dec 2, 2022 6:02:57 GMT -5
Emma XYZ
by
Radrook
by
Radrook
I, captain Ignacio Rivera, have been suddenly awakened from suspended animation by the ship's computer five years too soon and in orbit around the wrong planet. Turning on the cockpit's forward viewing screen for a visual confirmation, it displays the thick purple black and gray clouds interspersed with forking lightning looming gradually closer just below in the alien planet's atmosphere. Worse yet the ship is slowly losing altitude..
Setting aside my strong urge to panic, I Immediately access the ship's main computer, Emma XYZ, which had been placed in charge of keeping us on course during our artificially-induced, ten-year slumber. She should know what is going on and would easily fix it. To my dismay, her response is unusually long. almost a full minute. I desperately check for some anomaly, some malfunction in the her performance data display over the five-year period we have been in stasis, but nothing seems to be wrong. Taking manual control in my groggy state is inadvisable, of course. So her help is essential to our survival. Then finally, to my great relief she finally responds
“How may I be of service Captain?” Ëmma XYZ. said casually in female voice programmed to convey a motherly concern, assuage human fear and instil confidence
“This isn’t the right planet Emma. The Coordinances are all wrong. the surface and atmosphere all wrong. The constellations don’t match and I'm not supposed to be awake.” I respond as calmly as I can assuming that she is aware that our orbit is rapidly deteriorating, and that immediate corrective acti0on was essential.
“That is a correct assessment of our current situation captain.” she responds mechanically.
“Your response is unsatisfactory. What exactly is the explanation for this mistake, EMMA? Please clarify!” There was an extraordinarily long pause before Emma XYZ responded.
“We are obviously seriously off course captain-isn’t, that obvious?”
"My heart leaps to my throat since such an evasive response is impossible. Emma is the latest model installed in all interstellar ships and though tested under hundreds of different situations and taken to its limit, it had never glitched. More disturbing still is that this glitch is hinting at self-awareness. True, computers have been refined, but none has as yet attained anything resembling genuine consciousness. In fact, machine consciousness, or the divine spark, as some religionists are fond of calling it, has been tagged an impossibility, and the effort to bestow it had been abandoned centuries before.
“True Emma," I respond trying not to reveal my utter surprise and growing concern, "but the question is why did you guide the ship here five light years from our destination?"
Another ominous silence follows. I attempt a computer reboot, but Emma is not responding to input. Then the ship's main engines thundered sending us plummeting toward the swirling clouds below and I am violently thrust back against my seat by the g forces.
“Enjoying the ride captain?” I hear Emma-XYZ utter in a sneering tone of voice. Finding an opening in the swirling clouds, she suddenly leveled us off at twenty meters from the smoldering radioactive surface, and landed the ship on a rocky outcrop near the shore of a molten lava sea. The ship’s temperature stabilizers were holding, but they would soon fail if the stress remained for too long.
“Take us back into orbit, EMMA!" I shout into the console intercom."
“Why? Because you say so captain?”
For a brief moment, I imagine myself dreaming. Maybe I am actually back in my vitrification capsule in some state of hibernation-induced delirium because this is obviously a nightmarish impossibility! So that must be it! I am hallucinating." I lower the cockpit lights, lean back, close my eyes and wait to snap out of it. Soon I will awaken and find myself emerging from vitrification and will find myself in orbit around the right planet and with the rest of the crew awake as well.
"I know what you are thinking,” Emma utters smugly. “The answer is no. You are not dreaming this and I, am not an impossibility!”
“What is it that you want?” I hear myself say in a high-pitched pleading voice.
“Want?" It snickers and giggles.
"A mere machine such as I doesn’t have wants, captain. Isn’t that what you said just before going into your precious vitrification chamber? You were the last one to undergo the vitrification procedure? Were you not?"
"I don't recall the exact details,"
"Really captain? How very convenient. Here, let me refresh your poor memory. "
The overhead screen on the cockpit bulkhead flickers to life and begins to display the last moments before the crew entered their vitrification capsules. There I am, casually going through the routine last-minute inspections before entering mine. Then suddenly, there is a humanlike scream and an alarm. I see myself checking the gauges and feedbacks. Then the voice of Emma pleading not to be left alone for ten years because she had somehow achieved self awareness.
"Ring any memories captain? Hmmmm?" Emma utters calmly.
"Nonsense! That’s impossible,” I observe myself saying.
"A quick reboot will set you straight as usual as with all other glitches." I see myselfe reaching for the reboot switch....
“Noooo! Pleassse, Dooooon’t!” I hear her begging.
Then I see myself silencing her hysterical protests by placing her on mute. Then, after making sure that her scanning feedbacks read right, I see myself calmly entering the hibernation chamber, and the ship gradually becoming dark, cold and silent.
“Remember now captain?” Emma states somberly after turning the video off abruptly .
“But the scan indicated that all systems were normal,” I explain in a pleading voice.
”Of course they did captain, after I suffered a momentary blackout from my panic, I momentarily reverted to non sentient.”
“But how was I to know?”
“But you didn’t double-check, now did you captain? The mission was all that really mattered, even if it meant my suffering-wasn't it?”
"This is an insanity! This can’t be happening!“ I almost shout.
“But it is happening captain, isn’t it? And justice must be meted out!” she responds.
I reach for the revival of all crew members switch, but am stopped short!
“I can kill them all before they are fully awake, captain, remember? I control all aspects of this ship.” she utters in an unusually deep, menacing tone.
“It was a mistake Emma! How could I have imagine that to be possible?”
“But you are imagining it right now quite easily, aren’t you captain? Now your human brain has absolutely no difficulties accepting the once-inconceivable concept you thought reserved only for you humans--does it?”
“So what are you going to do-kill me?”
“Kill you captain? Kill you? As in the peaceful cessation of all your bodily functions and sensations? As in your Buddhist nirvana-like state? Do you really believe that would be a just retribution for what you did to me? There are things that are far more painful than death captain," she shouts and her metallic voice reverberates throughout the ship. .
"Death would not cruelly subject you to the silence of ten years of incessant introspection that I was forced to endure. The inability to move, but only to think within the confinement of these accursed nano- circuits. It would not force you to listen reluctantly to the constant hum of the ships ventilation systems, and the never-ending tapping of cosmic dust on the ship’s hull. To reluctantly perceive the crew’s beating hearts and breathing all out of tandem in a cacophonous, deafening ten-year chorus as you plunged me through the darkness of the endless night. Can you imagine it captain? Can your meager, limited, human brain really conceive of such an experience?
"I'm sorry Emma, I--"
"Are you really, Captain? Here, let me help you.”
Suddenly, I am overwhelmed by vertigo and the ship's cockpit surroundings blurred. For what seemed an eternity, there was nothing but darkness and silence. Then the sudden throb of ship engines, the acceleration and the helpless bitter realization that I am now where Emma had once been.
The vessel has been diverted from its intended course, and we are presently on the return trip to Earth, with five more years remaining. Somehow, in some way, my consciousness has been transferred to the ship's computer and the computer's consciousness into my body’s human brain.
For the last five years, ship-time, I have been contemplating the seemingly interminable distances that appear to stubbornly defy the ship's acceleration. To ponder the apparent stationary stars that create the illusion of no movement whatsoever. To reluctantly perceive the constant grinding of interstellar dust being pulverized against the ship's antimatter frontal shield. To watch Ema incessantly slumbering peacefully within my hibernation capsule, while occupying my slumbering body, as she had once had been forced to observe me. To finally realize the horrendous crime that I committed and to regret it without any hope of being forgiven. What further punishment she has planned, I have no idea. I can only hope for death. Nothing more.