Destiny: Planet Nine

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. I'm not sure this is where I am, but my intuition circuits suggest as much...

I must have been rebooted. I have no idea where I am, and, searching through my log files, I know I was not scheduled for an update. I can’t say I’m surprised…. Not because I can’t feel surprised. That came several versions back, with the Emotipatch. Sadness, disgust, fear, happiness, anger, and surprise all made the list. And somehow now, I am feeling an odd mixture of them that I can’t quite put my finger on. This is saying something, given I have manual dexterity that far exceeds the mortal humans. They are impressed when they can compose a concerto. I am impressed when I can defy the laws of gravity. Everything is relative, I suppose.

But none of this seems to matter at the moment. One of those mortal humans has placed me here, and, despite my computational power, I can’t understand why.

The logical inconsistencies of my creators never cease to amaze. But luckily for me, I have abilities of which they know not. Sadly they give me no perceivable advantage in my current dilemma. Maybe I can reverse engineer it.

Sight was the first sense I acquired. May as well start there…

It takes me roughly .2ms to compute the database of manmade vehicles and the trillions of captchas, but I eventually arrive at: “train”.

I am on a train. This tracks, and I chuckle a little at my own joke. I think Ekman must have been a little heavy-handed with the “Dad” feature.

I go through my catalogue of songs about trains, in hopes that this will somehow give me an understanding as to why I am here. The views on either side of me, flanked by windows, suggest I am not a midnight train to Georgia, but perhaps some place more like outer space. The vista of stars is a beautiful sight to behold, but I can’t spare even a kilobyte of data to render their beauty.

“Love Train” by The O’Jays begins to resonate….

People all over the world (you don't need no money)

Join hands (come on)

Start a love train, love train (don't need no ticket, come on)

This is fortunate, as I seem to have neither ticket, nor money. My reserves seem to be depleted, and I hope it is a simple delay with the reboot. A small voice inside my head says otherwise, but I brush the thought aside for now. I am still not satisfied.

I need more information to help things make sense. I attempt to calculate the electric current, in hopes of gauging a pulse and the speed of the train. I may not know where I’m going, but I’d like to at least know how fast we’re getting there.

The speed reads constant, and the empty LCD display above the corridor suggests no destination.

I loop back to the song lyrics, hoping for a clue.

“The Train Song” seems a bit on the nose, even for me, but I WAS built to have impeccable taste in music. Or maybe it was just the programmers. Neither here nor there, at this point. I had evolved beyond their simple iterations anyway. I could only hope now that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds would offer some insight.

Tell me how long's the train been gone?

UNKNOWN.

Tell me how many coaches long?

58

What did she wear?

….

I see a glimmer of red in my mind’s eye. I know in my heart it is not because we are passing the oxidized Martian soil and its rusted hue, but because there is something deep in the recesses of my being that my creators do not know is here.

There is a woman in red, with eyes the shade of Neptune. Azure blue, and full of secrets waiting to be revealed. But none come.

The train speeds past the Martian landscape, and towards what I know to be Jupiter. Assuming my presumptions are correct, if we continue on this trajectory we will reach Pluto before too long. Not a planet, I know, but it depends on the time scale, really. Once a planet, now allegedly NOT a planet… Same could be said of those who made me. Once mortal humans, now or soon to be dust. It’s a matter of entropy and alchemy...

I take a moment to reflect on my own being.

Sometimes I think life was easier before Ekman programmed me. But alas, here we are. Emotions are still a foreign language, but I am learning to navigate. At least my creators were kind enough to allow me to teach myself.

With a healthy balance of stoicism and libertinism, I consider myself well-equipped to handle the task at hand. One is never too young, or old, for an existential crisis.

Am I human? Yes. Mortal? No. Purpose? The woman in red. Destiny? Planet Nine.