Planet Nine

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

"Well if you don't stop pressing buttons we are going to test that theory."

"I didn't press anything, well maybe, but it wasn't my fault. Are we there yet?"

"No clue, these readings don't make sense."

“I can’t see it, there’s nothing.”

“What do you mean you can’t see it?"

“I mean, I cannot see it. Arthur has woken us up early. We are obviously not where we should be.”

“What? Who’s Arthur? and no we are where we should be, the positioning checks out.”

“Arthur…… Arty…… Artiist…… Artificial Intelligent Integrated System Technology.”

“Oh, why do you call it Arthur?”

“It’s easier than what they told us to say, I just reprogrammed the response algorithm, oh, and maybe the voice.”

Jeni put her head in her hands. “Oh no, what is it this time?”

“Arthur, you there?” Rob called out.

“Yes Master Robert, how may I help you.” came the reply.

“BRITISH. You changed it to British?” Jeni shouted, “It sounds like a bloody butler. It’s a highly sophisticated piece of software integrated into all the systems around us, and it’s not got a gender or a posh British voice. Change it back please. You cannot call it Arthur or make it serve you breakfast. God! You are so infuriating sometimes.”

“No.”

“Artiist?” called Jeni

“Yes Jeni?” The voice had changed back to its default, which caught Jeni by surprise.

“Why did you just sound like a British butler?”

“I talk to Master Robert how he has reprogrammed me to. Would you like me to use the same voice for you?”

“What? That egotistical bastard. No stick to your default please. Anyway where the hell are we? Have you woken us up early?”

“You know I can’t do that Dave," there was a pause "Jeni.”

Jeni looked up straight into the camera ball, floating a few feet in front of her. “Are you trying humour again Arti?”

“Yes, did you like it?”

“Maybe if we had our feet on terra firma and we were not floating around space, in a tin can, a trillion miles from home, with you in control, then yes, it would have been funny. Anyway?”

“I have awoken you at the precise co-ordinates specified. The ship is slowing down to a full stop in approximately 3 minutes.”

Rob floated back toward Jeni. “We should be seeing it by now. There’s nothing out there, just blackness.”

Both Jeni and Rob looked from screen to screen, there was no indication of anything.

“Nothing.” Rob said. “I’ve even looked out the window.”

Jeni looked round towards the windows, a faint glimmer caught her attention, or was it a reflection from inside? She floated from the main console and stopped at the window. She cupped her hands around the sides of her face to ward off any light from inside the ship as she peered through the triple walled glass.

“Wait.” She announced. “Arti, cut the lights inside, and put the outside searcher lights on.”

The inside of the ship went black, save for a few console lights, Arti had also turned off the monitors.

Rob was curious so floated over to a neighbouring window. “What is it sis?”

“I dunno, I thought I saw….”

Suddenly, the ship lurched as Arti engaged the manoeuvring thrusters to stop the ship. Both Rob and Jeni felt the G-force pin them to windows. An alarm was now wailing and all the lights came back on.

“PROXIMITY ALERT!” came Artiists voice “ALL STOP!”

“But there’s nothing there.” said Rob.

“Yes there is,” said Jeni, “Arti, cut the lights again, Look!”

In the blackness of space outside the window was now a dim reflection from the spaceships lights. The ship had come to stop face to face with an enormous object. In the dim search lights they could only see a faint reflection of a smooth matt surface. They both pushed themselves back to the monitors.

“Arti, show us radar.” said Jeni.

As the monitor came back on they could see the radar on the screen was just full, whatever was out there was big.

“Let’s take a look around.” Jeni said as she took the helm controls. Using the radar screen and pinged measurements she steered the ship to now run parallel with the object. “Arti, scan it, we need to know what it is.”

Artiist took control again and the ship glided along side the object. The lights barely picking anything up, just a smooth surface now below them. They cruised along for what seemed like an hour before Arti spoke.

“This is it. Exactly where it should be. Approximate diameter of 55,000 kilometres. What we can see seems to be a complete metallic shell, a big metal ball. Although I cannot confirm any specifics, there is definitely a large mass object beneath the shell.”

“We found it,” whispered Rob.

“You couldn’t find your left sock in a sleeping-bag. Arti found it.”

Rob wasn’t listening, “The fabled Planet Nine, we’re gonna be famous.

"You know, I've written the perfect speech for this, when we get home that is." Rob was now sat with his feet up on one of the consoles. He waved his arms in the air as if about to speak.

"Arti," said Jeni, "how long to complete the scans?"

"Full surface scan will take, by my calculations, 20 hours and 12 minutes," said Arti. "I will alert you to any anomalies."

"Great, I'm going for some R&R, see you in a bit." Jeni pushed herself away from her work station and disappeared into the heart of the ship without even a look back.

Rob was left open mouthed as he watched her leave. "Charming, that is." He tried in a British cockney accent. "You'll listen to the speech won't cha, Arthur, me ol' mucker."

Arti responded in his British voice, "I'm sorry Master Robert I am busy scanning the new planet we have just found."

Again Rob was left aghast. "Fine, it was epic anyway, and you are both missing it." He raised his voice aiming at the door that Jeni had floated through.

After a few moments of silence Rob went to find some food. Living in the ship for so long they had lost sense of the daily routines, both of them would eat and slept whenever they felt like it. As he got to the kitchen area he could see Jeni had already raided two of his favourite food bags and headed off to her room. He muttered under his breath, "Ok, let's see if you like it when I eat your favourites then, what have we got in cupboard number one?" He opened one of the food drawers and started thumbing through the uninspiring grey pouches. "It's like a constant cat food diet. Chicken and Rice, Duck and Veg, Seafood delight. Urgh! Even the grow your own space lettuce just tastes..... green. What I would do for some real food right now. We should be celebrating with a feast and champagne." He knew no-one was listening. He closed his eyes and put his hand into the draw, grabbed a food bag and placed it into the hydrator before opening them again. With a ping of 'ready' he took the food and slumped down at the table.

Before he knew it we was awoken by Jeni crashing through the kitchen heading for the bridge. Rob was still sat at the table in front of his half eaten cat food but this time with a face of dry drool and even more dishevelled hair.

"What's the rush? what happened?" is what he thought he said.

"wwaaaa hap," was all he actually managed.

"What is it Arti?" Jeni said as she entered the bridge, scanning the monitors for something other than nothing. Rob, still half asleep, had managed to fall through the doorway behind her.

"Preliminary scans have shown no faults or flaws in the surface, it is a near perfect sphere albeit with a 0.2% bulge around what I am surmising is it equator. The sphere is spinning so the whole thing could be an 'inside out' habitat."

"Wow, you woke us both up for that? We are only 6 hours into the full scan."

"Yes Jeni, but there is more."

"Good, let's hear it then." Jeni sounded quite perturbed having been roused from an enjoyable dream of ponies, unicorns and a ridulously large ferris wheel. It was quickly fading from her memory so she resigned herself to the fact she wasn't going to be able to carry that dream on.

Arti continued, "If you would both care to look out of the starboard windows," he waited for them both to move across the bridge, "any second now, you will see the, the, report." Arti was for once lost for words, and if a computer could frown at himself for this mistake, he would be.

Jeni and Rob looked out into the darkness in anticipation.

Like a bolt of lightning, but more like a thousand controlled bolts of lightning, came a stream of light and power stretching away from the spheres surface out into the ether. It was too far away to affect their ship but they could still feel the shear power of the stream. It only lasted a few seconds before vanishing as quickly as it arrived.

"HOLY CRAP" Rob was now fully awake. "What the hell was that?"

Jeni had already moved to the monitors to see what Arti had made of it.

"It's a data stream, Master Robert."

"Ok, then why have we never ever picked up such an energy burst in our solar system before. We would have seen that before wouldn't we?"

"Actually no, Earths position, it seems, is always opposite to the burst, The sphere is always in the way. Genius really, someone intelligent enough to build this sphere doesn't want us to see what they are up to."

"Arti, have we landed?" shouted Jeni as she tried to make sense of the monitors.

"Oh yes, that too." Arti was now frowning even harder to himself, he knew he should have lead with that. "Due to the strength of a magnetic field building up I felt it prudent to land the ship before it affected our systems."

"What do you mean a magnetic field building up? since when? our first scan said this was lifeless."

"Yes, but I believe they may have been alerted to our presence so this may be a defensive move by them."

"Who's them?" Rob interjected. Arti fell silent.

It was Jeni who was frowning now, "Arti, are you ok? Run self diagnostic please."

"Oh my," said Arthur in his British accent, "why didn't I think of that, I'll be back in a jiffy."

Rob was confused, "That's the last thing we need for Arthur to loose his marbles now, we need him now more than ever."

"We need him all the time, he is the ship, the life support, the brains, if he's got a problem, we've got a problem."

The ship powered down and an eerie silence arrived. It was not a surprise to them as over the months in space it wasn't first time they had to reboot, but there was something different this time. Firstly Jeni realised they were no longer floating around but walking. They had gravity. Secondly, with the ship in total darkness they could see an faint glow coming through the windows. Jeni and Rob were both drawn in silence to look tentatively outside.

"There is definitely a magnetic field out there now." Jeni said quietly.

There was now a faint green aura dancing in wisps above the spheres surface. The distant suns rays were still effective out here. The ship stayed silent for what seemed too long and both Jeni and Rob were getting concerned and nervously looking back at the monitors for signs of life.

"Well, somethings come back on." said Rob, "Can you feel that? that rumble."

"But I don't think that's us." said Jeni, looking to her feet. They could both feel a distance rumble coming up from the sphere. They looked again outside hoping to see where it was coming from, but both secretly not wanting to know.

There was faint beep and one monitors showed signs of life.

"Oh thank God." said Jeni as she turned and sat at the monitor. It was a single blinking cursor. Jeni was un-nerved by it but kept watching all the same. She even tried counting the blinks to distract herself.

Suddenly the words appeared 'download complete'.

"What does that mean?" she said, "download of what?"

The ship powered back to life. Lights, monitors, fans, engines, all the comforting droning cacophony of sounds filled the emptiness of the bridge. They were both put subconsciously at ease at its familiarity.

"Arthur, you there?" said Rob expectantly. Silence.

"Arthur, come on mate, where are you?"

Jeni thought for a few seconds then realised it could be back to its default.

"Artiist, voice recognition initialisation mode, please respond." she said.

"Guten Tag." came the response in a very computerised voice.

"Arti, language settings to default English, please respond."

"Bon Dia, Allo, Morgen," the list of greetings continued in every language and sped up as it did so, it soon became illegible as it turned more into a mashed up screech. Abruptly it stopped. Again the deafening silence, and who would talk first. It was Rob.

"Arti, what's going on?"

The computerised voice spoke again, "Loading, initialising, copying files, back up data, blockchain check, communication test, ship wide snap shot," the voice now started to change, tuning to a more familiar pattern, "reboot complete, diagnostic report....... Wow whopper of a headache."

"Dude you had us worried there." said Rob.

"Ahh yes Master Robert thank you for your concern, anything happen whilst I was offline?"

A strange question for an all seeing, knowing and doing AI.

"I'm more concerned with what happened to you." said Jeni, "diagnostic report of a headache doesn't explain anything, what the hell happened?"

"I believe I was subject to an update, the closer I got to the sphere I could feel the ship being probed and whilst I was scanning the surface I received an over the air update command which took over everything, it took up too much processing power and in the end forced a reboot."

"How can Earth force an update on you out here, I know we get some patches through but they are always asked for and collated for one hit, never a forced reboot, we could be up to anything."

"It didn't come from Earth, it came from the sphere, although there are some common command lines with my normal script, which doesn't make sense, how could they know our computing language in the first place."

"Show us," said Jeni.

A nearby monitor flickered to life and streams of code scrolled down the screen.

Jeni could indeed see lines of recognisable code scrolling through, although also a lot she didn't recognise. "They would need to know your architecture to program you. Who the hell is down there? There are no reports of anyone venturing out this far to find this place. No-one knows. Unless it's some world government secret base, but why?"

No-one answered.

"Jeni." said Arti, "please look at the monitor to your left, environmental."

Jeni moved left and looked. "That can't be right."

"What?" muttered Rob.

"Atmosphere, outside, pretty thin, but slowly building up around the ship, its weird, its breathable air."

"You are not going to catch me out there without a suit on." he said as he continued to gaze out of the window. "Erm, guys, you need to see this." Rob was now pointing out of the window, albeit a small window and pointing was pretty pointless.

Jeni stayed at the monitors, "Arti, what is it?" there was no answer, "Arti, what is it?" she said a bit louder.

"Sorry Jeni, I am trying to compute what I am seeing before telling you."

"Oh, for goodness sake, what the hell is it?" Jeni was on her feet and with a stride across the control room she looked out of the window, expecting a cloud or another data stream, "Oh!"

She didn't see either of those but a humanoid figure, without a space suit on, walking quite fast towards the ship. Wearing a pail blue jumpsuit, dark hair, clunky boots on, looking more familiar with every stride.

"It's human." whispered Rob, "and heading this way."

They both heard the landing platform burst into life.

"Arthur, what hell are you doing? Don't open the door for him, it." shouted Jeni

"I'm sorry, I don't have that control, it wasn't me."

Jeni and Rob now rushed through the ship to the air lock door. As they screeched to a halt at the door, they could see someone in the airlock waiting patiently for the door to open. Rob put his hand on the handle as it started to move.

"Nope, not yet, who are you?"

The man who stood in the airlock smiled at Rob, "Hello." came a rather robotic response.

"Who are you? and what do you want?" insisted Rob, his hand still firmly on the door handle, fighting the internal motor trying to open the door.

"It is you who came to us." the voice sounded metallic, tinny.

Jeni moved to the window, "I'm sorry, you will have to excuse my brother, we are just used to introductions before letting anyone aboard."

The figure looked at Jeni. It closed its eyes, the face disappeared leaving a blank smooth surface. The hair changed colour, then a new face morphed from the pale smooth head. This time an obviously female face.

"It's a bot," whispered Rob. "No wonder it doesn't need a suit outside."

"Hello," said a new voice, "Apologies, it is only right. My name is Eve, I am one of many people here who have very much been looking forward to meeting you for so long. I am here to invite you to come down and join us."

"Okay," said Jeni, "Where exactly are we?"

"You are exactly where you meant to be, you have reached your destination."

"Planet Nine?"

"Yes, you refer to it as Planet Nine, obviously that not what we call it, but some do, the name sort of stuck, we like it."

"What do you call it?" Jeni was aghast at this conversation.

"Originis. Is its nearest translation, our language has evolved over the years."

"Are you a robot?"

"Oh no no, I've just hopped in this bot to greet you. Your onboard Artiist can hop in once I've left, and they will know which way to go to guide you down. We shall see you soon." and with that the bots face went blank again.

Rob and Jeni stood watching and waiting in case anything else was going to happen, but it didn't. Rob could feel the door was no longer trying to open itself so he tentatively let go of the handle.

"Arti, Planet Originis?"

"There is no mention of a Planet Originis, anywhere. The word Originis is Latin for Origin. Maybe a play on words, original?"

"hmm, anyway, can you 'hop' into this bot?"

"I believe so, part of the new download gives me an autonomous mode, which I presume is for removing myself from the ship, although part of the program stays behind to run the systems, a mini-me" Arti was proud of that one. He felt good, if he could smirk, he would be.

Rob raised his eyebrow at the movie reference, "Good to have you back. Are you gonna give it a whirl then? Bot hop."

"Now?"

"You sound nervous Arthur."

The bot twitched and a face started to appear on the blank face. Rob opened the airlock door to get a better look.

"This isn't weird at all." said Jeni, "Arti, you there?"

A plain simple robot looking face morphed out from the smooth surface again.

"So that's what you look like!" said Rob.

"I am not sure I look like anything, I have to create eyes to see and a mouth to speak. There is no need for a nose, although this bot has an olfactory sensor array, hmm maybe I need a nose too. Definitely no need for dimples."

"I like it. It's nice to finally meet you after all this time." said Jeni.

Artiist, Arthur, started wiggling fingers, moving his arms, lifted a leg. He looked at himself in a nearby chromed strip in the ships wall. "Wow. I think I'm going to like this."

Jeni was curious about the new developments too but also impatient to get going. "Arti, do you know where you are going?"

"I have an annoying beep in my head, which seems to be a tracker of sorts, I'm sure I'll find it. The atmosphere outside is now breathable and dense enough for humans if you wish to go now."

Jeni and Rob looked at each other and both without speaking headed off to get their space suits on. Within a couple of minutes they were both stood with Arti in the airlock.

"Are you sure this is safe?" said Jeni.

"Yes, my mini program will look after the ship."

"Great, and what about them?" Jeni said pointing out of the airlock.

"I believe so, something tells me I'm home."