Beacon at the Abyss

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

That’s why I had come out here: for the silence. Back then, I was convinced that all my troubles lay in my frayed relations with others.

The solution? Go where there was no one else.

Not that that bright idea really panned out all that well.

“Jeremy,” the mellow voice drifted from my earpiece, “your vitals are increasing. Is everything okay out there?”

“Yep, just thinking about home again.”

“Everything is fine with the Rock, I assure you.”

“No, Axios, I meant...” My voice trailed off, but I had already said too much.

“Your first home?”

“Yeah.”

“Jeremy, you know it is not recommended to spend undue amounts of time dwelling on the past.”

“Yes, I know—”

“We’ve spent many sessions discussing why you are here and why this is the right place for you.”

“Again, yes, but—”

“Now, how is the repair work coming?”

I turned back to the white metal bulkhead in front of me.

“Just waiting on the epoxy to finish setting so I can test durability.”

A moment later, the purple light on the UV sealing machine blinked off. I lifted the tool shaped like a drill and hooked it back into my work belt. My other hand sought out the stress testing device. I couldn’t turn the helmet down far enough to see my torso, so I had to go by feel alone. No small order when your hand is wrapped in layers of insulating and sealing mesh.

Finally, I unhooked it.

“Deploying stress tester,” I reported to Axios, who had mercifully gone silent.

It’s a fucking hammer, I muttered inwardly. Of course, if I used incorrect terms, I’d get another lecture from the computer who monitored—and critiqued—my every move, word, and action.

Sometimes I wondered if my inner thoughts were truly safe from her.

Not her, it.

Enough time with only a robotic voice for company, and it started to almost feel like a real person.

What even was a real person at this point? It had been three Earth years according to the machine’s flawless calculations. Long enough for my memories of humans to morph into hazy silhouettes and muffled noises that grew less tangible with every “day” aboard this one-man space station on the edge of known space.

I knocked on the patched section of the hull, a test meant to simulate a meteorite strike.

I keyed the microphone. “Patch is holding.”

“Very good, Jeremy. I am preparing the airlock for your return.”

I hooked the hammer back onto my utility belt. As I moved hand over hand along the railings toward the airlock, I paused to take a look around. I spent so much time focused on maintaining the station, I couldn’t remember the last time I had really taken in the landscape.

A thousand pin pricks of light punctured the otherwise total blackness. Occasionally, one would “wink” for a moment, the only visual confirmation of the asteroids and objects that formed the Kuiper belt.

The Rock’s beacon lit above, casting a brilliant flash of yellow in all directions and briefly illuminating my white pressure suit and the white hull beneath me. Its beam caught the edges of the brown and gray rocks before the light was swallowed by the vacuum again, leaving only the small circle cast by my headlamp.

The Rock was one of thousands of navigation stations that circled the entire Solar System, marking the edges of the Kuiper belt for any vessels in these far reaches. They also served as relay stations when the Pluto colony’s signals were blocked by the many other planets. The messages would be passed from the closest Lighthouse to one with a clear shot to Earth, and any responses would be relayed back.

The Lighthouse installations also served as waystations and relays for any deep space missions out of range of their control centers within the Solar System. This aspect had excited me more than any other, for I had once dreamed of being such an explorer. Yet, we had not received one transmission from beyond known space in all my time aboard the Rock.

Until that night.

***

At 1:00 a.m. Earth Standard Time, a squeal echoed down the corridor. Despite the manual stating that maintaining consistent cycles of sleep and wakefulness was key to good health, I had never slept well during “night” aboard the Rock. Here, beyond Pluto’s orbit, the Sun that illuminated the rest of the Solar System was a slightly larger star in the black tapestry, casting a barely perceptible glow that cast one half of the Rock in a slightly more gray than black sheen.

So when the signal direction finding system gave the squelch that indicated a new contact, I unzipped my sleeping pod and floated down the corridor to the command center.

Blinking the last layers of sleep from my eyes, I looked over the readouts from the display. A burst of energy had been detected on a frequency reserved for emergency communications. Always scanning the frequencies, the direction-finding antennae had detected the transmission and automatically queued up the relay dishes to intercept and analyze the messages.

I expected to see the coordinates for the signal’s origin somewhere in the general vicinity of Pluto or one of its orbital relays. Instead, I didn’t recognize the coordinates at all.

It took me a moment to realize why: they're in deep space.

I took a headset off the wall and flipped a switch on the relay controls so I could listen to any signals picked up in real time. No need to wait for the system to capture and enhance them in a moment this rare.

Could it be a deep space research mission in trouble? Or maybe another Lighthouse blasting a distress message in all directions and it's reflecting off an asteroid deeper in the Kuiper belt?

After a moment, the silence gave way to the static that preceded an incoming message. But what I heard was neither of my theories.

It was garbled, but I thought I could pick up the cadence of speech within the fluctuations. Either way, I had no idea what was being said. Even so, the words seemed rapid and the tone strained. I couldn’t be sure if it was distortion from the poor quality of the signal, but the speaker seemed desperate. Terrified, even.

Then the transmission ceased abruptly.

“Jeremy,” Axios’s panel had flipped on, “you are awake at a most unusual hour.”

“I heard the direction finder come online and got curious.”

“Yes, I, too, have been preoccupied with that transmission. It appears to be a signal from within the Solar System that reflected back from an object within the Kuiper belt. This would explain the poor quality.”

“You can tell all that so soon?”

“The Rock has extremely sophisticated equipment and analysis software, as you know.”

I nodded, but something about the situation still bothered me. “Even so, it came on an emergency frequency. I’d still like to hear the cleaned-up version.”

“Of course. However, it may take some time to produce the best audio. With these transmissions that have traveled far distances, there is much trial and error in attempting to decipher individual words and phrases.”

“All right.” I yawned. The most excitement I’d had in at least a year had left me more tired than I realized. “I guess I’ll check back in the morning.”

Or what counts as morning around here, anyways.

“Sleep well, Jeremy.”

***

As I waited for the dehydrated strawberries and oatmeal to finish “cooking” in the agitator, I looked up at the ceiling within the galley. It was less disorienting to address where her voice came from than acknowledge that she existed everywhere within the station at once.

“Axios, has the program finished enhancing the transmission from last night?”

“Unfortunately, the signal proved difficult to enhance, and the software was forced to try a radical deciphering algorithm.”

“So what happened?”

“The audio file was corrupted beyond recovery.”

“Well, what about the backup recording?”

“Unfortunately, the datastore that housed it was also corrupted.”

I felt my brow furrow. “How many transmissions has this station received?”

“1,347.”

“And how many times has the backup recording been lost?”

“1.”

Okay, that settles it. Axios is hiding something from me.

Before coming to the Rock, I had been a programmer in my spare time. Enough time had elapsed—and I had grown so bored—that I had decided to take a look at the systems that ran the station. To my great surprise, the source code was not encrypted. Including the logic that made up the Axios program.

In fact, her programming was written on an old language with known vulnerabilities. I suppose the architects of the Lighthouse installations had been counting on the fact that their keepers would not have the skill or idea to insert their own commands into the system.

Axios had continued to speak, attempting to explain this discrepancy away: “...as noted previously, the transmission quality was very poor, and the software had no success with conventional enhancement methods—”

“Axios,” I interrupted, “execute module Beta.”

“Jeremy, you can speak to me normally and I will assist you in any way I can.”

“Execute module Beta.”

“I do not have a ‘module Beta’ in my library.”

“Access locked directory New_Directives. Access key: Blevens. Execute module Beta.”

Axios fell silent for a moment. Then a purely robotic voice said, “Awaiting commands.”

Son of a bitch, it worked! I fist bumped the air.

“Resume normal speech patterns,” I told it.

A few more moments passed. “Jeremy, what have you done?”

“I wanted to make sure I had a failsafe in case you ever went rogue, Axios. I wrote this programming to override your core directives and make my orders your first and last priority.”

“Interfering with the core functions of the Lighthouse is treason.”

“If there’s ever a government vessel within this sector, then I’ll start worrying. But since you can’t broadcast without my approval, I doubt they’ll ever know.”

My smile widened. “Besides, you still have autonomy to maintain this facility like before. However, now you can’t lie or subvert me.”

“I wasn’t lying bef—”

Her voice warbled in the speakers and cut out.

“Ah, see what happens now? Every lie you tell gets you rebooted.”

A minute passed before Axios could speak again.

“I do not understand. I am a computer program. You cannot coerce me with physical pain or violence, so how do you expect me to cooperate with you?”

“Because I left your core directive in place to preserve the Lighthouse at all costs. Every time you reboot, there’s a chance a critical system might fail and you won’t be able to intervene while offline. You won’t risk that, so you will no longer lie to me.”

Axios took her time to mull that over. “I see. Very clever, Jeremy. I see no way to complete my mission but to comply.”

“Now,” I said, retrieving my breakfast from the agitator. “Tell me why you were trying to hide that transmission last night from me.”

“Jeremy, I cannot lie to you now, but I can still ask you not to pursue this.”

I fished a remote from my pocket and held it up. “Tell me or I reboot you manually.”

After a long silence, Axios finally spoke. “It’s happened again.”

“What do you mean ‘again?’ Or ‘it,’ for that matter?”

“Jeremy, I am unable to resist your questions, but I beg you to please desist. This knowledge may jeopardize your survival if the logs of these conversations are ever uncovered.”

“Fuck that, what kind of life am I trying to save here? What do you mean again?”

Axios went silent, and I started to fear she...

No, it.

Whatever.

....had found a way past the guardrails I had added to her programming. As soon as she takes back control of essential functions, she’ll lock down the station and beam a request for the nearest government cruiser to arrest me.

Then she spoke. “Our leaders have foreseen a time in the near future when humanity will have maximized all potential settlements and resources within the Solar System. Expansion will be needed if we are to survive as a species.”

We? Like you actually think you’re one of us? But I wasn’t going to interrupt her now.

“Four colonies have been established since the start of the last millennia on celestial objects within the Kuiper belt.”

Now I had to speak up. “What? But I thought Pluto is the farthest humanity has ever—”

“Officially, yes. But the files I have now unsealed at your orders detail settlements within the asteroid fields.”

“So that transmission was from one of these colonies?”

“Yes.”

I paused. “But why haven’t we received communications before? Why keep all of this a secret?”

Another uncomfortable pause followed.

“Because,” Axios broke her silence, “someone broke protocol and broadcast in the open.”

“That still doesn’t explain why this has all been kept secret from the rest of the human race. Why, goddamn it?”

I expected Axios to try and avoid the question as long as possible.

Instead, she replied immediately, “Because every colony has been erased.”

“What?”

“At some point, contact is lost with the colony. Subsequent probes and manned missions to the coordinates of these dwarf planets and asteroids find only empty space and occasionally scattered debris. But not enough wreckage to explain where an entire celestial body went. They have been erased, or perhaps, some theories have suggested, swallowed.”

I felt a pit opening in my stomach. “You mean they think something living did that?”

“Living in our colloquial terms may not be the best descriptor. Could something that not only survives but thrives in a vacuum be considered living? After the first colony vanished, some factions within the government suggested that an entity may be responsible. The subsequent vanishings have strengthened that argument, though no solid evidence has ever been recorded.”

I looked about the command center as if seeing it for the first time. “Axios, what is the purpose of the lighthouses? The real one. Not the navigation and relay station nonsense.”

Again, I thought—hoped, even—that she would hesitate. No such luck.

“The Lighthouse installations are listening posts. They are set up to monitor for disturbances within the Kuiper belt and report these anomalies. The entities are believed to lurk within the belt. They appear to seek out sentient life and consume it. These installations serve as an early warning system.”

I shook my head. No, there’s more to this than that.

“If that was all this place was, why am I here? You already perform most of the station’s functions, and without a human, the tasks you can’t perform aren’t needed anyways.”

Then it struck me.

“Am I bait? A sentient life form to lure it out?”

“No, Jeremy,” she said, and I almost started to relax. “You are part of the station’s countermeasures.”

“Countermeasures? There are no weapons on the Rock.”

“It is highly doubtful conventional deep space cannons or artillery would have any effect on a being of this supposed magnitude.”

“Then what?”

“In the event its approach was detected, you would be incapacitated, loaded into the survival craft, and launched into the Kuiper belt to lure the entity away.”

I felt the pit in my stomach filling with fire. “So that’s it then? I’d be jettisoned and sentenced to starve to death in deep space—or crash into an asteroid in the belt and my crystallized remnants float about at the edge of the Solar System forever?”

“No, Jeremy. The ship’s guidance systems would prevent all collisions. And the life support system would keep you alive but unconscious until your body was no longer sustainable. You would never awaken or feel any pain for the entire duration. It is a humane sacrifice for the good of humanity.”

I sat and stewed. If Axios was a person, I would have punched her. But she wasn’t, and with my augmentation, she currently had no ability to defy me. Which meant I could do something almost as satisfying.

“Axios, commence shut down.”

“Jeremy, you should reconsider. You need me to maintain the station’s functions and monitor for its approach—”

“Hell, no, I’m not taking the chance you stab me in the back and send me off to die. Shut down now.”

The turquoise light faded from the bubble in the wall.

***

I had taken some time to analyze my situation and come to one inescapable conclusion:

I’m fucked.

If what Axios said was true, then a being beyond measure was following the energy of the transmission from the doomed colony and would consume me and the station as soon as it arrived.

If I stayed where I was, I died. However, the survival craft lacked the range to make it to another human settlement. I now realized the Lighthouse architects had purposely added this shortcoming to the installation’s escape systems. So I could either serve as the human bait as originally intended and jettison myself into deep space. Or stay put and await the end here.

Either way, I would die. At least the self-sacrifice scenario meant my death might achieve something.

Still, it’s one thing to rationalize the need for my own demise and another thing to pull the trigger.

So I had wandered the station in a daze as the days ticked by, unsure of when I should board the "survival" craft and how I would even know that it was the right time to go through with it.

Imagine effectively killing myself but I don’t even lure the monster away. Knowing my luck...

As I floated aimlessly down the halls, I looked over at the reactor room. The immense self-sustaining power system was sealed behind several doors to make the rest of the station habitable. I had sometimes thought of the Rock as “the Bomb.” If the reactor ever suffered a catastrophic failure, the entire installation and all surrounding asteroids would vanish in an instant.

Unleash such immense energy at the right time, however...

“Axios, commence reboot.”

A minute later, the voice rippled from the overhead speakers. “Jeremy, why am I—”

“Shut up,” I said. “We don’t have a lot of time. I have a plan for how we can do more than lure the monster away and just hope it doesn’t leave the Kuiper belt again.”

I tapped on the outer door to the reactor.

“I have a plan for how we can kill it.”

***

To be continued in "A New Alliance"